


A Better Universe: Volume I

by The_Last_Kenobi



Series: A Better Universe [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Beware, F/M, I am screwing with ancient history in order to produce this, It will be long, Jedi Council reforms (slowly), M/M, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Multi, New Jedi Order, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Star Wars AU, Starts off close to canon and deviates, This story will earn its rating, We can't just fix canon at the last second guys, We gotta start earlier, jedi order
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:26:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25623610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Last_Kenobi/pseuds/The_Last_Kenobi
Summary: The Force is more sentient and more sapient than we give it credit for.The Force desires Balance. In order to avoid a universe where the Empire rises out of the ashes of the murdered Jedi Order, the changes and happenings have to start earlier. A lot earlier, in fact.Welcome to my massive fix-it, where the Jedi Order is less constipated to begin with, the Sith never really went away, everyone gets a treatise on philosophy, Palpatine has a harder time of it, and everyone who deserves hugs and happiness will get it - at least for a while. This is a Better universe, after all, not a Perfect one.
Relationships: Adi Gallia/Mace Windu, Dooku & Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Satine Kryze, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Siri Tachi, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn/Tahl (Star Wars), everyone/happiness
Series: A Better Universe [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1857391
Comments: 89
Kudos: 180





	1. A Shift in History

**Nothing**.

And **Everything**.

Before Time itself, all things exist and no things existed. The Force bound the infinite emptiness together with the coming universe, and in the absence of Time, all things were one.

And from the depths, a cry, a murmur, a whisper.

The Force swirled, undecided.

Images and sounds flashed—blue and red lights clashing against one another, screams, the march of a thousand iron footsteps, the smell of decay and rot. Betrayal that shattered the delicate balance of Light and Dark. War.

Two factions. One group, then two—a strong cord violently pulled apart—two children at constant war, always killing, killing, drifting ever farther away from who they ought to be, becoming more like one another in all the worst ways, in the bloodshed, breaking the scales.

The Force hesitated.

But the Force _needed_ Balance as much as it sought to _create_ it.

A Father. A Daughter—Light—a Son—Dark. Balance. Conflict, striving, the furtherance of Life and Death.

To let things take their current course would bring Balance in the end, but with years of overpowering light or throttling Dark. This was…uncomfortable. Perhaps…? Yes. Maybe. The Sith. The Jedi. Both so out of Balance with the Force, unless…

Change them. Change them Now. Alter their course. A different universe. Different enemies, just ever so slightly, a little greyer. A little more…balanced.

The Chosen One.

 _Balance_ , whispered the Father.

 _Do it_ , hissed the Son.

 _Let them live_ , said the Daughter.

 _Balance_ , they all said as One.

And the Force **_moved_**.

* * *

Tiny motions. A gesture of a hand, the glimmer of a smile, a hand rested on the hilt of a weapon, a trigger finger that hesitated, a touch on the shoulder.

Grand motions. A swift execution instead of hesitation. A hand held out in peace instead of war. Negotiations coming far, far earlier; philosophies stirred like silt beneath a waterfall, churning together, changing.

In one timeline, in an altogether different Reality, the ancient Force wielders split violently down the middle, between two very different practices and beliefs. War. The Sith Wars ravaged the universe, named for the temporary victors, later the losers, ground into dust by the Jedi and by infighting in their own ranks. Civilizations rose and fell. A Republic was formed, was destroyed, was remade. Shadows gathered at the heart of it, a restless evil that had taught itself patience and played with the hearts and minds of the masses and individuals with such precision. The Darkness eroded the Light until the Light was shrunken and shriveled, afraid; Blackness burst forth at the heart of the organized galaxy and washed to the farthest corners like an icy flood, drowning trillions in its mire. A man blazed first with light and then with flames and then retreated into the stranglehold of a cruel master and a body made of machinery designed to let him live and breathe on the pressure of pain. Pain. Pain everywhere, for two decades. Enough suffering, enough Blackness and Darkness, Evil practices flourishing so strongly that there was enough Darkness in those twenty-three years for centuries. Years of instability followed. Pain echoed out into the vastness of creation, and the Dark and the Light found little accord.

Discord.

 ** _Imbalance_**.

But that was another timeline, a Never-Was, an Almost-Was, a Could-Have-Been.

Now that timeline is only echoes.

The Force is not entirely without sentience, without sapience, without a will. The Force moved, is moving, and everything will be different.

Almost everything.

In this galaxy, in this It-Is, the ancient settlers of Tython grew apart more slowly. Their factions divided. War pressed them further apart. Bloodshed, confusion, lack of clarity.

First one would dominate.

Then the other.

Then one.

Then neither.

There was a Dark Empire and a Light Empire. They grappled like wildcats, tearing through the stars, and then both dissolved, scattered into nothing.

The Shadows fell between the starry places and waited, spread out and thin, divided between themselves and full of discord. Some of them settled in quiet places and began to think.

The Lights were gathered up by the new civilizations and coaxed into new form, new life. They were not as they had once been. Mangled. Off the True Way. But they were alive.

The Light and the Dark—Ashla and Bogan—Jedi and Sith—they were alive. And so long as they were alive, they had the potential to change. So long as they recognized one another, they had the opportunity to choose.

To strike Balance.

* * *

_A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…_

A Sith Lord from a long-feared line of Dark Children stood on a green hillside in the lake country and looked down on the family playing by the waters. The parents were barely noticeable. The eldest child, a son, was less than nothing. Practically null in the Force. A nobody. But the younger, oh, the younger—the younger was aflame in the Force, blazing with power untapped and unformed. Barely four, perhaps five years of age.

Wearing the veneer of a distant and unremarkable traveler, the Dark Lord Plagueis watched as a child named Sheev Palpatine played in the sunshine, not knowing that his entire future had just been planned out, not knowing that he had been selected by the newest Sith Master, not knowing that he would one day shape the destiny of the entire galaxy.

Still, the round blue eyes looked up and locked on the far-away man and a small frown settled on his tiny face.

The far-away man had something Sheev wanted.

Sheev had something Plagueis wanted.

Leeona Palpatine scooped her youngest son up in her arms and swung him in a joyful circle; she passed him to his father, who placed him on his broad shoulders and began to stride into the water, the older son tromping happily in his wake.

When Sheev Palpatine turned his head, the far-away man was out of sight.

He would be back.

* * *

In the same year, not many weeks later, a young man stood inside the brightly lit interior of the Jedi Temple, leaning against a wall. He moved with a little bit of a swagger; the pronounced gait of a freshly Knighted Jedi seeking to make an impression.

It would certainly make an _impression_ if he took a Padawan today, especially when he had only been a Knight for half a year.

But Yan Dooku was incredibly talented and incredibly sure of himself, despite his diminutive green Master’s constant teasing and mild derision.

A young female initiate suddenly caught Dooku’s eye. She was an opposite to him—near-human by the looks of it, petite, fiery red-hair braided down her back; she leapt around the salles with heedless fire, almost dancing, almost arrogant. She wasn’t the best in the room, but she believed she was, and therefore would be. If not today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then the next day.

Dooku closed his eyes and sank into the Force, seeking approval, and found—

A surprisingly scathing reprimand.

He asked again, insistent. The Force gave him a sharp nudge. If it had a voice, the warning in the currents of the great unseen energy would be snapping: **_No_**.

Knight Dooku hissed and ran a hand through his thick black hair. Unlike many new Knights, he had not foolishly allowed his hair to grow to ridiculous and unseemly lengths. He cut his longer than that embarrassing Padawan cut, certainly, but it was cropped closely to his face, a little longer on top purely for vanity.

So. The Force was being unusually clear about the girl, and he didn’t see anything remotely interesting in the others in the room.

With a sigh, he turned and strode briskly out of the training salles and down the hall to the higher-level salles reserved for Senior Padawans and Knights.

He had almost made it to an empty room when something heavy collided with his midriff.

With a cry, both he and the unexpected obstacle thumped to the floor painfully. There was a gasp; Dooku had a lapful of squirming child and then the boy tumbled away in a fright and stopped, kneeling on the floor and staring at him in astonishment.

Dooku stared back, nonplussed.

The child looked to be a mid-class Initiate—maybe nine, going by his round face and big blue eyes, but maybe eleven or twelve going by his height. It was difficult to tell. His hair was cut in the typical style, and with a long section of hair hanging freely by one ear, waiting to be braided in the event that he was chosen as a Padawan.

“I’m sorry, Master,” the boy said quickly. “I was running too quickly and I wasn’t thinking, I was just trying to get there on time—my best friends are waiting for me—”

Dooku stood up awkwardly, dusting his palms and sleeves. “Er—that’s quite all right, Initiate…?”

“Initiate Jinn, Master,” the boy said brightly. He ruffled his already unruly chestnut brown hair with one hand, then seemed to remember himself and bowed. “I’m really sorry.”

“Hmm.” Dooku’s lips quirked into a slight smile. “I’m really quite all right, Initiate Jinn. And for your edification, I am Knight Dooku.” He gave the child a shallow bow of acknowledgement, hesitated for a moment, and then said: “Good day,” and turned on his heel to keep walking.

Only—the boy followed him, trotting along in his wake. “What’s…edfi…eif…eddie..”

“Edification,” Yan said, gazing down at this gangly child walking unconcernedly by his elbow. “It means…for your information, for your extension of knowledge. Knowledge that changes you for the better, supports you. Edification.”

Initiate Jinn nodded thoughtfully. “That’s an interesting word. It’s probably not so useful to use on younglings, like me, but if you were in public and you wanted to show you’re intelligent—or if you were trying to show someone that you were a little smarter than _they_ were—that would be a good word to drop.”

Dooku raised an eyebrow. “That’s…very astute of you. It’s true that the right vocabulary will open and close doors for you, particularly in politics. Diplomacy has many layers.”

Jinn scoffed. “Yeah, and so many of them are weird and unnecessary.”

This time, Dooku actually chuckled. “You have an excellent point. Especially for someone who has never set foot outside of the Temple except for field trips.”

The boy scowled for a moment, then seemed to reconsider. “Hey, you just did that thing. You talked in a way that reminded me that I’m much younger than you. That’s rude. And smart.”

Force above, this child had no limits!

“Correct.”

Jinn kept speed-walking just to keep up with the Knight’s long stride. “Are you a diplomat?”

“Sometimes.”

“Are you a pilot?”

“I can fly very well, yes.”

“Are you a guardian?”

“We are all guardians.”

Jinn tipped his head to the side. “Now you’re just being vague on purpose. You remind me of Master Yoda.”

Dooku let slip another tiny smile. “Well, he did train me.”

“Oh!” the Initiate exclaimed. “You were his actual _Padawan_? That’s so cool! Did he get you more or less with his stick?”

“More. Definitely more.”

“Where are you going?”

“Well,” Yan considered for a moment. “I was going to practice moving meditation, but since I can’t seem to shake you, I believe I’ll try actual, regular meditation.”

“Like kneeling somewhere?”

“ _Like kneeling somewhere_ indeed.”

The brown-haired child thought for a moment. “Since you’re gonna let me stay for a bit, will you help me meditate? I’ve been having trouble. I get too distracted by things going on around me. Like my friends, or people I don’t like, or a Master walking by, or a butterfly…”

Dooku pinched the bridge of his nose and set a hand on the child’s shoulder, steering him into a stairwell and then up and out through a doorway into a closed-roof garden. One of hundreds throughout the Temple, some of the only remaining examples of soil-grown life left on the urbanized planet of Coruscant. Jedi loved natural life and craved to be surrounded by it. Living in a crowded city did wonders for being surrounded by sentient and sapient life, but greenery was a necessity.

Jinn seemed delighted. He opened his mouth to keep talking, but the Knight cut him off.

“It seems to me that you are very attuned to the Living Force. Growing things, life, whatever happens to be happening around you,” he clarified, when the boy just looked at him. Jinn nodded.

Dooku continued. “That can make meditation both easier and harder. There are benefits and downsides to both aspects of the Force. For someone as strongly connected as I suspect you are, meditation is a matter of realizing that you don’t have to ignore the things that ordinarily distract you. Quite the opposite, in fact. Come here.”

Knight and Initiate settled on the grass, kneeling, facing one another with their knees just inches apart.

“Now,” said Yan, “Close your eyes.” Both of them shut their eyes. “Listen to the Force. Listen to the trees, the water, the thousands of tiny sounds being made by life all around you. It’s all one and the same.”

Yan did not immediately sink into proper meditation. Instead he fell into a light trance, stretching out his senses to keep a metaphorical eye on the boy in front of him. Jinn seemed to be pondering the instructions heavily. The Force around him was clouded with dubiousness and a certain twinge of excitement that amused the Knight.

“Remember what Master Yoda always tells us,” he murmured. He was speaking out loud and through the Force—one requires his voice, the other merely impressions and intentions expressed through sheer ripples of energy. “The Force _is_ life. It creates it, dwells in it. Wherever life is, the Force is. The butterflies are as much part of your meditation as the closing of your eyes is.”

Yan waited.

The Initiate was sending out waves of thoughtfulness and uncertainty.

His attention latched briefly on to a chittering insect somewhere nearby—for a moment Jinn seemed to be pulling back, tempted to open his eyes and see the bug in that way, to look at it and perhaps touch it.

Yan sent out a quiet ripple of encouragement.

Slowly, Jinn sank more deeply into his meditation. Yan followed suit, carefully, unwilling to leave the child unsupervised.

He _felt_ it when the boy connected with a deeper level of the Force.

One where he could see, hear, taste, touch, smell, sense his surroundings in an entirely new way, just as powerfully as his physical senses could, perhaps more so. Green. Growing things. The Force growing and evolving and flourishing. Leaves withering. New ones taking their place. A bird’s nest high above them in a tree branch. A ladybug on the edge of a leaf. A fallen blue feather whispering across the soil by the tiniest of breezes.

Knight and Initiate glowed in the Force with satisfaction and amazement.

Jinn was amazed at the Force.

Yan was amazed at the boy.

They meditated together for over an hour, slipping in and out of awareness with one another, occasionally prodding minds—a brief poke or tug in the Force to say hello. It was completely unorthodox for a Knight and Initiate, but—

Well, but _what_ was the question.

The older of the two understood perfectly well what was happening here, but on the other hand…this child was so different from what he had imagined, so different from himself. And he really was a bit young to be chosen. Ten years of age? Twelve was most common. Eleven next. The bookends, the ten and thirteen-year-olds, they were chosen rarely.

But despite not speaking to Dooku as sharply as it had in the salles, the Force was still being abundantly clear about this.

Dooku emerged quickly and neatly from his meditation.

Jinn attempted to copy him and came out groaning and clutching his head. Dooku sighed. “Yes, I’m afraid that meditation does not bring instant enlightenment. Some things must be practiced to be achieved. It takes time to learn how to disconnect quickly from proper meditation; usually one begins slowly.”

Jinn frowned at him from underneath the hands massaging his temples. “You could’ve warned me!”

The Knight smirked. “Perhaps.”

* * *

The door opened with a hiss to reveal the small, deceptively slow-moving figure of Yoda, leaning on his gimer stick and frowning up at his much taller former Padawan. “Here to cause trouble, you are,” the Grand-Master accused. He walked out of his quarters and Yan hurriedly stepped out of the way to avoid being within whacking range by the infamous stick.

“Perhaps,” he said, falling into a slow pace to keep even with Yoda’s much smaller gait.

Yoda _hmmmm’d_ , his ears curving in annoyance. “Less inscrutable, you are, than think you are.”

“Like Master, like Padawan.”

The ancient Jedi chortled. “Kettle, pot, _hmmm_ , yes.”

The former training partners strolled leisurely down one of the corridors, staying close to the transperisteel wall, basking in the filtered sunlight. Coruscant was not blessed with a rich atmosphere, not for millennia now, since the entirety of the planet’s surface had vanished under layers and layers of scaffolding, ancient construction-work, and old dwellings now forgotten and dilapidated. The air was sustained through good fortune and the incredible wealth and technology that also controlled the weather. Rainfalls were scheduled; the lower levels received an automated spray-down with cleaning particles in the water to help erase grease and odor. It was rarely completely overcast—the weather tended to land on patchy cloud cover or brilliantly sunny. Today was one of the latter days. Every edifice on the city-planet gleamed, their dirt and flaws concealed by light.

Dooku rolled his shoulders, enjoying the blanket of warmth. He was not as in love with the Temple and its airs as some of his fellows, and certainly less than the Masters who were retired or chose to follow career paths in the Archives or the Crèche, but nonetheless he welcomed the respite and familiarity.

“So?” Yoda prompted. “Something to say, you have.” It wasn’t a question.

Dooku nodded. “I’ve found my Padawan. I intend to claim him before the Council tomorrow.”

Yoda _hmmm’d_ again, this time with outright disgust. “A new Knight, you still are. Unsure that ready you are, the Council will be. Unsure, _I_ am.”

Yan sighed and moved to stand in front of his former Master and then dropped to his knees to be on a closer eye-level with him, a habit ingrained from years of trying to keep on the same level with the most revered Master in the Order.

“Master,” he said, reverting to the honorific he had been using since the age of twelve, “I am sure about this. I admit I was searching for an apprentice for career reasons—some of them perhaps…less than generous…but this boy. This boy is supposed to be my Padawan, I am sure of it. To be honest, Master…”

The Knight sagged ever so slightly and allowed his head to tip forwards, looking at the polished floor instead of Yoda’s wide, knowing green eyes. “…It makes me somewhat… _nervous_.” He spat out the word quietly and then continued talking very quickly. “I was expecting to find an apprentice like me, someone who has the same…career interests. This child is not that. But the Force insisted, and despite the fact that he already talks my ear off, I enjoy his presence.”

There was a long pause.

And then Yoda began to laugh—full out laughing, leaning on his gimer stick and watching his kneeling former apprentice stare back at him in bewilderment.

“ _That_ ,” chuckled the Grand-Master, “good, that is.” His chuckles died away slowly, and his ears lifted thoughtfully as he looked out the windows at the gleaming horizon. The wizened Master let his voice drift into a sigh. “Yan.”

He rarely called Dooku by his first name. Yan looked at him sharply.

“…Seen many things, I have. Coming to us all, change is—much change, yes. Risk, there is, in taking a Padawan…foresee danger, I do, for the Order. _Danger_ also, for _my Lineage_. You. Your sister Padawan. Your own Padawan.”

Yan Dooku frowned deeply, his dark eyes glinting. “I don’t understand—”

“Cautious, you must be. Sure, you must be,” Yoda said. “Sure, you _are_. But _danger_ there is ahead.”

Dooku pondered his former Master’s words for a few moments; he reached out and placed a hand on one of Yoda’s small shoulder in a gesture of reassurance. “Master…I don’t know what you’ve seen, but I believe we will survive it. Grow, perhaps. Besides—” his lips quirked in a smirk, “I’m well acquainted with danger.”

* * *

“Do you have any idea how to stay out of danger, Padawan?” Dooku drawled. He folded his arms and glowered at the other imperiously.

It didn’t seem to leave much of an impression on twenty-three-year-old Qui-Gon Jinn, who merely smiled serenely, stretching the nasty-looking scratches on his face. “I do, yes. I’m not actually your Padawan anymore, you know. Been Knighted for almost a year—I thought you were there, oddly enough, but maybe I’m misremembering.”

“Intolerable brat,” Dooku reproved, but he moved to stand beside Jinn as the taller, younger man limped his way out of the hangar, neither of them quite touching but the Master ready to offer support if it was needed.

Dooku, now with flecks of silver in his dark mahogany hair—flecks of silver which he studiously ignored—was still an indomitable figure, even compared to his towering former apprentice. Qui-Gon had never quite understood his Master’s insistence on proper decorum, neatness, or a polished appearance. He wore his hair ridiculously long and his robes never seemed to sit quite right, to Dooku’s everlasting despair. They had fought tremendously in Qui-Gon’s teenage years, they disagreed on policy and negotiating tactics and focused on different saber styles. Dooku was in line to become a Shadow; Qui-Gon was a roguish diplomat. They were practically opposites.

Still, even a blind, Force-null could see how proud the Master was of the Knight, and how fond the Knight was of the Master.

Even as they walked slowly towards the Halls of Healing, bickering.

“I don’t see why—”

“ _Honestly_ , Qui-Gon, it makes _perfect_ sense—”

“I am newly Knighted! That’s the last thing I need. I’m not _you_ , you know.”

“Oh yes, I certainly know _that_.”

“I’m only saying, it seems like a bad idea. Look at the _state_ of me, you want to drag a _child_ into this?”

“No. I want a child to keep _you_ _out_ of it. You’re always more careful with your strays, I can only imagine how responsible you’ll _force_ yourself to be with a Padawan tugging on your robes.”

“These are the kind of missions I always take,” Qui-Gon exclaimed. “I can’t _give_ _up_ my career path for a youngling, and I have no interest in slowing down so early on!”

“Gentlemen,” a female voice complained. “Are you going to check in to the Halls or stand there until Knight Jinn passes out from compounded exhaustion, blood loss, and infection?” The Senior Padawan currently on reception, a Korun woman with long black hair braided over her shoulder, was glaring at them from behind her desk.

“Tamara,” Qui-Gon said warmly. “Diagnosing me on sight now?”

“No,” she said shortly. “Those are just among your most common injuries, of which there are so many. And you’re bleeding. You’re bleeding, right now, on our perfectly clean, sterilized white floors. Get over here right now.”

Knight Jinn sighed. “Very well. It’s really not—”

“—As bad as it looks?” Tamara finished for him, closing a hand around his upper arm and receiving a yelp of pain from the tall Knight. Dooku concealed a rather mean smile beneath his hand. Judging by the scathing look Qui-Gon tossed over his shoulder, the Knight had sensed his amusement clearly enough.

“What do you think, Tamara?” Master Dooku called after her as she led Qui-Gon away for a health assessment and treatment. “Would a Padawan do him good?”

“I’m still not sure any of your Lineage should have taken Padawans!” she replied. “But, yes, probably.”

Qui-Gon scoffed loudly. Then he yelped again as Tamara shoved him into an examination room at out of sight.

* * *

Yoda was late to dinner.

Granted, the little troll—the small Master, rather, did walk much more slowly than almost any other Jedi in residence. But as much as he preferred his own notoriously boggy meals and highly suspect soup that had sent many an Initiate and hapless Padawan to the Healers with nausea, Yoda did enjoy the periodic suppers that Dooku liked to host for the Lineage, and he was rarely late.

Sometimes his Padawan prior to Yan, a female Mon Calamari now approaching her elder years by the name of Zuna Reggil, attended. Today she was off-world, visiting their sister Temple on Jedha. Zuna was an Archivist and was more likely to be found buried in holobooks and ancient texts than bounding around the galaxy “hobnobbing with the ultra-rich or waving lightsabers at the extremely rude.” (Her words. Both Yan and Qui-Gon took mild offense.)

It was just Dooku and Jinn, seated around the low table in Dooku’s quarters, arguing over breadrolls the subject of the rarity and usefulness of holocrons and the restrictions on their access, for almost a full hour before the Grand-Master finally entered the room.

Silence fell.

Something was wrong. Anyone would have been able to tell just by looking at Yoda; these two members of his Line, his former Padawan and his own former Padawan, could sense it more than most.

Yoda looked grieved.

“Master?” Dooku said quietly.

Yoda huffed and leaned on his gimer stick as he approached the table. He sat down on a raised cushion and set his stick aside gently.

Qui-Gon buttered a roll and offered it to his Grandmaster, who accepted it and began chewing in bleary-eyed silence. The other two exchanged a wary look.

“Grandmaster?” Qui-Gon asked.

Master Yoda finished his roll before he replied. “Lost a Master, we have,” he explained slowly. “Killed by ambush, he was, deceived by ones he thought to help.”

Dooku closed his eyes briefly. Qui-Gon bowed his head and dropped his chin into his hands, looking wounded. “Ah.”

“Had a Padawan, he did. Master Ko.”

A ripple of alarm ran through the Force. “The Padawan—did they…are they…” Qui-Gon could not seem to finish the question.

Yoda blinked his round green eyes solemnly in his direction. “Alive, is Padawan Ar’Gall. Terribly wounded, here—” he touched his chest, his rounded head—“and here. Minor physical injuries, only, he has. Not with his Master, was he, when occurred the ambush did.”

“The training bond,” Dooku murmured. “An abrupt and violent severance. He’s fortunate he’s not suffering deeper psychic backlash.”

“I don’t know how lucky he feels right now,” Qui-Gon said sharply. Then he winced and rubbed his temples; when he spoke next, it was softly. “Poor boy. How young is he?”

“Not so young, I should think,” mused Yan. “I knew of Master Ko. I heard he took a Padawan five years ago. It must be the same.”

“Same, he is,” Yoda agreed. “Eighteen, is Feemor Ar’Gall. Eighteen, in need of a Master. Not many who would take him, are there, at that age. Older Masters, have Padawans already they do, or desire a fresh initiate. Younger Masters want young ones, also, maintain a proper age gap. Want Feemor, no Knight will.”

“I’ll take him,” said Qui-Gon.

A deep silence.

Qui-Gon seemed to realize what he had said and blinked in surprise. “I…I mean, I will talk to him. See how he’s feeling, what he wants to do. There may be a candidate he has in mind, or maybe the incident will drive him to select a different Jedi Corps.”

“Oh, certainly,” Dooku said with a perfectly innocent Sabacc face. “I concur.”

“Talk to him, you should,” Yoda said. “Go now, you will.”

Qui-Gon gaped. “Now? I haven’t even eaten!”

“Eaten, you would have, had not arguing with your Master, you had been! Go! Off!” Yoda picked up his gimer stick and whacked Qui-Gon’s hand, which was resting on the tabletop. Jinn hissed in pain and rubbed his offended hand with a near-pout on his face.

Dooku maintained his blank expression until the door had closed behind his former apprentice, and then he began to laugh.

Yoda watched him with a faint sparkle in his eyes that had not been there five minutes before.

“Oh, Master,” Yan chuckled. “I will never celebrate the loss of a fellow Jedi, but I can’t help but take pleasure in this. I’m going to mock him mercilessly. That boy is as good as Qui-Gon Jinn’s Padawan.”

“Chose them, did the Force,” Yoda hummed. “As chose, it did, you and Qui-Gon, and chose it did you and I. Hope, we shall, that makes a good decision Qui-Gon does when his turn it is to choose, without such clear guidance.”

Dooku dismissed that with an airy wave of his hand, his attention already back on his meal. “Qui-Gon is entirely attuned to the Living Force and therefore somewhat impulsive and heedless, but any Padawan of Qui-Gon Jinn’s is _destined_ to do great things.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the Massive AU I have been cooking up for months! This is more of a groundwork chapter, but don't worry. We get into it pretty quickly. All your favorites will appear at some point or another, no fear.  
> Updates will be sporadic, but I have this mostly planned out. You're getting a trilogy (in proper SW tradition) probably about 40 chapters each in length.


	2. Snowfall - Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Four years after the death of a Master and the start of an unusual Master-Padawan pairing, three Jedi set out on a joint mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! Thanks to everyone who has left kudos and subscribed; I am thrilled to have you along for the ride!

“I see it,” Feemor said quietly. “We’re approaching. Not much longer now. I’m so sorry everyone, I wish you the fondest of farewells.”

The young man, just shy of turning twenty-three, had a grim turn to his lips as he clutched the manual controls; one hand reached out and tapped at the nav-com, trying to focus on the upcoming landing. The yellow-blonde Padawan braid, entwined with dozens of markers to show his progress, swept across one shoulder; it was long, now. Not much longer before it would deserve to be ceremonially cut.

Feemor sighed.

A hand came out of nowhere and whacked him on the back of the head. “Drama child,” complained Qui-Gon Jinn, standing behind the pilot’s chair to watch their descent. “It won’t be that bad.”

“It will be,” Feemor disagreed. “Hoth, Master. _Hoth_. They’re sending us out to a frozen rock with hardly any lifeforms, completely covered in snow and ice and frigid oceans and dangerous pits and tunnels, with only the Force to protect us. We are all going to _perish_ in the _cold_.”

Qui-Gon snorted and whacked Feemor again.

“Hey!”

“Dramatic young Padawan—”

“I’m only _five years younger than you_ —”

“We have coats, thermal packs, and survival training. We also have this lovely, heated and relatively well-provisioned ship. Or we will, if you can manage to land properly.”

“Boys,” came a new voice from outside the cockpit—this one warm, exasperated, and female. “Do you ever stop bickering? It’s a wonder you’ve gotten anything accomplished together in the past five years.”

“We do very well, thank you,” said Qui-Gon.

“Yes, I do an excellent job cleaning up his messes, preventing him from insane maneuvers, and filing most of his reports,” Feemor said airily. “And if you hit me again I will hit you back, Master.”

Qui-Gon Jinn let out a loud harrumph and stepped aside to let the newcomer take the co-pilot’s chair.

“A true gentleman,” Feemor said.

“No,” the woman smiled. “He just knows that you and I are the most likely to get this shuttle on the ground in one piece. For all his skill with a lightsaber and his record-setting abilities on a speeder, the man still can’t handle spaceships.”

Qui-Gon harrumphed again.

“Oh, is _that_ why I’m always the pilot?” the Senior Padawan mused. “He always made it seem like he was challenging me to take the lead…smug son of a Hutt.”

“I _was_ challenging you,” said Qui-Gon. “Challenging you to notice that I was pulling one over on you. You failed. Utterly.”

“I’ll duel you any time, Master Jinn,” the blonde said placidly. “Tahl can oversee. She can holorecord it so that it can be submitted to the Temple Archives.”

“The only thing I want to oversee is a successful mission and a quick return to Coruscant,” Tahl said dismissively. Her unique gold-and-green eyes twinkled with fond amusement, but she kept her tone even. “I still haven’t caught up on sleep since my last mission, and then the Council lands me with you two bantha’s backsides. Perhaps these are the challenges that will make me a Master without having to even train an apprentice.”

“We are a lot of work,” Feemor agreed cheerfully. “Now—” the shuttle hummed loudly; snow and freshly melted water splashed up around them as the heat from the engines disrupted the planet’s icy environment. “I assume everyone’s reviewed the mission dossier?”

“Of course,” said Tahl.

“Yes,” said Qui-Gon.

Tahl flashed her peer a fake smile and then grinned at Feemor. “Which means he skimmed it.”

“Absolutely.”

Qui-Gon stood up, dusting imaginary lint from his robes and looking lofty. “I think I’m the one being tested here. You two insist on mocking me no matter what I do.”

“Would you feel better if you could comm that little boy in the crèche, Qui?” Tahl teased. “The one who hero-worships you, I’m sure you remember him.”

“Follows you around whenever he gets the chance,” Feemor chimed in.

“I’m fairly sure he escapes the crèche sometimes just to toddle after him,” Tahl added. “Bright little thing. Extremely annoying. His idolizing of you doesn’t speak well to his intelligence though.”

“Xanatos is a perfectly intelligent child,” Qui-Gon argued. “He’s just a little…He just likes me because I Searched him and brought him to the Order. I was the only adult he knew for a while there.”

“Still,” Feemor said, drawing out the array of heavily-layered, synthetic-fur-lined coats from the closet and passing them out. “You’d think he would have noticed by now.”

“Noticed what?” his Master snipped.

Tahl hummed thoughtfully, pulling on thick gloves and a pair of protective goggles. “The hair.”

“The robes.”

“The slightly vacant expression.”

“Hey!” Qui-Gon protested. “Have you both had enough fun at my expense? We do have a rather urgent mission here.” The tallest Jedi stomped to the doorway and slammed the control pad; the ramp descended, and even the protective shielding could not stop the swirl of icy air that rushed into the shuttle. Jinn waved the others on impatiently and treaded down the ramp first, testing the snow with one large boot. He sank in a few inches before finding solid ground.

Tahl followed him, and then Feemor.

The dark-skinned female tapped the side of her hooded head, and the others turned on their comms.

“Everyone hear me?” Tahl asked.

“Yes,” the other two answered.

“It’s cold,” added Feemor.

“Is it?” Tahl asked breezily. “At least the sky is clear. For now.”

“Poor Padawan,” Qui-Gon said with oozing sympathy. “What a _tragedy_ for you, being exposed to your least favorite _weather_. It’s brave of you to be here.”

Feemor scowled.

Tahl winked at him behind her goggles and then tilted her head at her colleague. “It’s brave of you to be here, Jinn, when you still haven’t proved you know what the mission details are.”

Qui-Gon sighed irritably. “Let’s walk as we talk, all right?” He waited until they were all treading in his footsteps before speaking again. “I do know what we’re doing here. On a more serious note, we really do need to focus; this is likely a sad story.”  
  


Tahl nodded.

“Missing scientific crew,” Jinn listed off. “Passed over Hoth five rotations ago, lost contact with their home planet, Foda, at around the same time. Crew consisted of four senior scientists, two apprentices, an intern, and a Senator’s son who was there to assist in presenting their findings to other planets. The Senator runs a campaign platform that includes an interest in furthering technological advances, so his diplomatically trained son was a reasonable choice for a crew member. They’ve been missing for five rotations, now; if they survived whatever put them out of contact, they’re probably beginning to run low on rations and power. We three were closest to Hoth on our way back from Delphon, so we were sent for purposes of speed, despite lack of proper provisions.” His voice grew clipped and intense as he spoke; he was now completely absorbed in their duties.

Feemor nodded, even though he was behind the other two and they couldn’t see. “Yes. It worries me that it was their _return_ trip back to Foda, however—it’s possible they’re lower on fuel and supplies than we might hope for. We could have less than a single rotation to find them alive.”

“You’re right,” Tahl said with concern. “All right. We landed in the zone that the Foda marked out for us when they requested aid; if the ship crashed shortly after they last had contact with them, the wreckage will be somewhere in a 2.7 kilometer radius from where we landed. We’re going to check the most likely spot for a crash first—the foothills, over there—” she gestured with a gloved hand ahead and a little to their left, “—and then… _oh_.”

 ** _Oh_** , indeed.

Following her gloved, pointing hand, the two men could see the pillars of ice and stone that rose high into the sky, one of Hoth’s mountain ranges. And behind them, they could see a brewing storm, a swirling mass of cloud and snow, heading in their direction.

“Son of a—” Qui-Gon hissed between his teeth, the sound crackling in their comm units. “Our time limit just got closer. We may have to split up.”

“Split up?” Tahl asked dubiously. “Go separate ways in a snowstorm? That seems _unwise_.”

“But we have to cover more ground,” he insisted. “It was already going to be difficult enough to search the radius before another rotation passes; if we stick together in a snowstorm we’ll never find anything.”

“He’s right,” Feemor admitted reluctantly. “I don’t like it, in fact I very much strongly dislike it, but—we have to put the mission first. Let’s split up before we get hit by the storm. Master Tahl, you could keep heading for the foothills; Master, you could head that way—” he pointed to their right, “away from the storm, giving you a little extra time to search an area with clear vision. And I can double back and search as much of the area behind the ship as possible.”

“A solid plan, all things considered,” Tahl muttered. “I still object to this whole idea.”

“Well, we can’t fly the ship in this weather,” Qui-Gon reasoned. “We can’t leave, and we can’t scan the area with the shuttle, its not advanced enough to detect a few life signs in these conditions, and there’s a possibility that there’s only one or two to find.” He did not say that there may be less than that, but they all thought it.

“Let’s check in routinely via comm. We’ll take turns giving a sound-off every ten minutes. If someone doesn’t answer, or if the comms shut down, turn around and head back or take the nearest shelter,” Feemor suggested, ever the pragmatist.

“All right.” Tahl tugged her fur-lined hood higher over her face. “Walking in different directions during a snowstorm on Hoth. And away we go.”

She strode off towards the mountain range. Qui-Gon gave Feemor a nod and a small smile and went his own way, and the Padawan offered a tiny smile in return; the youngest of the trio to doubled back and headed into the unknown.

* * *

Feemor resisted the urge to lift his goggles and rub warmth back into his numb, itching face. The snowstorm had caught up with him within twenty minutes of the group split; Tahl had to be at least half an hour from her destination, especially in the howling vacuum of grey-white-black, snow and ice and sub-zero temperatures.

The Padawan raised a gloved hand to his mouth and raised his coat collar higher.

He couldn’t see much. For the most part he was relying on casting out his senses in the Force, desperately praying that he would not miss any sign of life. It would be awful beyond belief if the missing crew perished because of his inexperience or some form of ineptitude.

“Sound off,” came Qui-Gon’s baritone, muffled on the comm by distance and the storm.

“Heard. About twenty minutes from the foothills, no sign,” came Tahl’s voice.

Feemor sneezed before tapping his commlink. “Heard. About fifteen minutes past the ship. Haven’t seen anything.”

“No sign in my field either,” replied his Master. “Stay safe. Next check in is your responsibility, Feemor.”

“Understood.”

Silence fell. He was alone again in the bewildering blur of flying ice and lack of color; the wind would have been screaming if there were any obstacles for it to hit nearby, but the region Feemor was trekking was empty. Well, as far as he could tell, in any case. Which wasn’t quite the same thing.

“Next time,” the blonde Padawan said aloud, partially just to hear something other than the dull roar of the snowstorm, “I am going to request a mission to a planet that never gets cooler than a summer evening on Corellia.”

* * *

Tahl’s legs were burning. The Jedi Knight had plenty of stamina and over a decade of experience under her belt at the age of 26, and her race was more immune to shifts in atmosphere composition and temperature changes than most humans were, but even she had to admit that plowing deeper into a freak storm on a snow planet with no clear destination and no obvious sign of success ahead was beginning to wear her down.

When she had stepped off the shuttle ramp almost an hour previous, her sturdy boots had sunk three inches into softer snow before striking a harder layer, likely the closest thing to soil Hoth had: a semi-permanently frozen layer of white, powdery ice.

Now she was barreling through drifting snow that rose up almost to her waist, not to mention the stuff that was hurtling through the air, clouding her vision, weighing down as it settled on her shoulders and hood, and stinging any exposed skin it could find.

The foothills were close, however.

Tahl decided to take a risk. She stood still for a moment and flung out her senses with the Force, focusing on everything ahead of her.

The Force replied, almost like echolocation—she was fifty yards from the base of the foothills.

Once there, she could begin exploring for signs of a crash. And hopefully this Sith-cursed storm would pass shortly after.

* * *

Qui-Gon waved a hand and the snowdrift in front of him scattered into billions of tiny fragments that were picked up and scattered on the winds.

His not-so-young apprentice had been correct—heading directly away from the storm, the towering Jedi Knight had the advantage of a clear horizon and his intimidating stature to give him a proper look at his designated area.

So far, only an unyielding line of ridged snowy hills and plains, a small pond that had probably frozen solid eons ago, and tendrils of snow sent out like whips from the storm nipping at his heels.

He sighed.

This whole mission had practically been doomed from the start. The outlook had never been good for the missing crew with it’s Senator’s son among their number; now they were risking the lives of two Jedi Knights and a Padawan not far off from his Trials. Equipped only with standard-issue comms, a few warmly lined coats, and a shuttle meant for simple journeys, not scanning dangerous environments for lifeforms.

He glanced at the chronometer he had tucked in his pocket.

Only a few minutes until the next check-in, but still, he found himself fretting a little—not that he would ever admit to it. He stomped through a few more yards of ice crystals and then sent a _curious_ pulse down his training bond with Feemor Ar’Gall.

He received a responding wave of _reassurance_ and a _grumble of discomfort at the cold_.

Qui-Gon chuckled.

Then his comm crackled and Tahl’s warm alto tones disrupted his chain of thought. “Qui-Gon, Feemor. I’ve found the crash site. The ship is high up; I’ll have to climb to see inside, but it doesn’t look good.”

His face fell. “Heading your way now. Ping your coordinates off our comm units so we can track you.” The Knight turned on his heel and surveyed the storm that had been chasing him with a wary eye, and then began hurrying back along the trail his own footsteps had made, heading directly into the mess.

“Already did.”

There was a pause, and then came Feemor’s voice, calm as ever. “Copy that, Masters.”

“No, Feemor, wait,” Qui-Gon said suddenly. “We can’t do anything until the storm passes in any case, and even if there are any living crew members, all we can do is keep them warm and well-cared for until the storm lifts enough to get them to the ship. There’s a possibility we may need to depart quickly with very ill patients. Return to the shuttle and warm up the engines. You can fly to the crash site to pick up Tahl and I and any survivors when the storm passes.”

“That makes sense, Master,” Feemor agreed. “I’ll let you know when I’m back at the ship. Stay in touch.”

“Excellent. See you both soon,” answered Tahl.

“Signing off,” Qui-Gon said.

* * *

Feemor had already begun his trek back to the ship when his Master signed off. Now the winds of the storm were hitting him almost dead on instead of off his shoulder, but at least he had the comfort of knowing that he was near his destination.

Nearer than Qui-Gon and Tahl were, certainly, and it was a much more comfortable destination too.

The thought made him frown a little. He was a Senior Padawan, after all, and he didn’t like the idea of drawing the easy stick simply because he was the youngest—and not even by so wide a margin, after all. He was only four years younger than Tahl Uvain, and five years younger than his second Master—and frankly, one of his dearest friends.

But he knew the plan made perfect sense.

Feemor concentrated, releasing the disgruntled feelings and misplaced pride into the Force.

The relief of shedding the negative emotions gave him a brief distraction from the freezing snow lashing every inch of his body.

Then something that was definitely not a cloud of snow rammed into him with great force and he slammed into the ground in a flurry of ice, snow, and a swipe of a white-furred, long-clawed arm.

_Oh, hels dammit—_

* * *

Tahl gripped the side of the cliff face with her gloved fingertips, her boots perched precariously on a craggy ledge.

She tipped back her head, ignoring the crystals that occluded her goggles, and eyed the distance between herself and the broken eggshell of a ship critically. If she used the Force to leap up to that ledge almost directly above her, then she could jump down and to the side to reach the crater in the side of the low rocky hill where the crew had impacted.

That was, if the wind didn’t knock her off the side of the mountain.

It was a risk she needed to take.

The female Knight took a deep breath that felt like frost in her lungs, gathered herself, and sprang.

Her feet jarred against the ice-slicked surface of the next ledge; she pinwheeled her arms for a moment before regaining her balance.

“Well. Thank the _Force_ Qui-Gon Jinn wasn’t here to witness that,” she mumbled into her coat.

The ledge she had chosen was larger than she had expected, curving away to her right and in front of her several yards, swirls of snow kicked up across its surface by the storm. With her eyes on the crash site now below her and to the left, Tahl began picking her way across it, considering the best spot from which to make a controlled leap.

The decision was taken from her when the ground gave way beneath both boots and she fell through shattered ice and crumbled stone and into darkness. Her head struck something and everything went black.

* * *

Qui-Gon, not needing to cast out his senses any longer for injured life forms, was using his considerable abilities to enhance his speed as he rushed towards the spot from which Tahl’s signal was coming. It had taken her most of an hour to reach that spot from the ship—if he crossed there in a straight line from his position it would take him the same amount of time.

At this speed and with ten minutes already behind him, Qui-Gon estimated that he had less than twenty minutes to the crash site left.

Less than twenty minutes, and then everything went wrong.

Down his idly humming bond with Feemor he suddenly felt a bolt of _shock_ and _panic_ —something had caught his apprentice off-guard, very much so if he was broadcasting this strongly—and then all he got was a confused tangle of _fear-claws-ice-pain-fur-pain-snow_ —and then a strange silence.

He halted, worried. _/Feemor?/_ he questioned.

Silence. The dimness of unconsciousness. _/Feemor, wake up!/_ he tried.

Still nothing.

Qui-Gon oscillated on the snowy ground, uncertain. He couldn’t leave Tahl to complete the mission alone, especially not with civilian lives in question, but—he couldn’t abandon Feemor to whatever in the hels that was, and there were few who would expect him to do so willingly—

A moment later, through his much paler bond with his friend, he felt a distant explosion of _surprise_ and _pain_ and then, just as with his Padawan, the muted buzz of unconsciousness.

Something had happened to Tahl.

“Sith dammit!” Qui-Gon swore, almost stomping on the spot.

What was he supposed to do, curse it all! There was no precedent for this in his experience! He was not enjoying the lesson.

His Padawan or his life-long friend? The apprentice he had made a Council-witnessed vow to guide and protect, or the partner who had been closer to achieving their mission objective?

_/Tahl!/_

No reply.

_/Feemor!/_

Nothing.

Qui-Gon clutched the hilt of his lightsaber for reassurance, took a deep breath of frozen air, and then began sprinting towards Tahl’s last coordinates, the Force humming through his bones and giving him dangerous speed. If there were any obstacles in his way in this storm, he would be unlikely to dodge them. It was a necessary risk. He had to reach his fellow Knight and complete the mission in enough time to return to Feemor’s side.

The fact that the ill-fated mission, the desperate time limit, and even the planet’s weather were against him only made his jaw clench.

He would not fail.

* * *

Feemor awoke.

He was confused; his head was aching and there were sharp, stinging pains that spoke of exposed skin and open wounds on his limbs. His eyes kept fluttering closed despite his best efforts to keep them open.

It took him an alarming period of time to realize that he was being dragged. Furred hands tugged carelessly on his legs, pulling him through drifts of snow, filling every open crevice of his coat with the icy stuff. The Padawan blinked and saw some sort of towering, hairy creature with a rather frightening set of claws.

He knew the name of this creature, but at the moment he could not think of it.

Feemor waited, allowing himself to be dragged as he struggled to think of a plan.

The longer he focused, the clearer his head became. He took stock of himself.

He doubted his confusion was due to a head injury—at least, not primarily. Judging by the small tremors wracking him and the burning sensation in his extremities and under his hood, he was suffering the early stages of hypothermia. There were claw marks down his legs, some of them bleeding despite the intense cold.

His lightsaber was still clipped to his belt, concealed beneath his coat and robes.

All right then.

He could deal with this.

It would be nothing more than a slightly embarrassing footnote on their mission report, Feemor was sure of it.

Feemor steadied himself. He took several deep, steady breaths, keeping as still as possible so as not to alarm the creature—

…and then he pushed himself off the ground with the Force and twisted his legs violently from the clawed grip, wincing as new cuts were gouged into his calves before he landed in a crouch, drawing his royal blue saber in a single motion.

The towering creature let loose a roar of anger.

Feemor rose to his feet, surrounded by swirling snow, shaking like a leaf and dripping blood from both legs. He kept his eyes on the still-unnamed beast and curled his lip in frustration, irritated at his lack of focus; Feemor tried to reach out along the bond to communicate with Qui-Gon, but either distance was interfering, or his head injury was rather worse than he suspected, or his Master was very distracted. Perhaps some unfortunate combination of the three.

Feemor lurched in the shifting snow and inhaled bitingly cold air.“I really do prefer warmer planets,” he sighed.

* * *

Qui-Gon paused at the base of the rocky hills.

Was that the storm whistling in his ears and making his head pound, or was that something along the training bond?

He concentrated, but whatever it was seemed to vanish like smoke between his fingers the harder he tried to catch it. Muttering words he dearly hoped his former Master couldn’t sense him saying from parsecs away, the Knight returned to his task.

There was no time to waste.

Tahl was close. Her location was not coming from the area where the crash was—not quite. So she must have been close before whatever had occurred had stopped her.

Worry whispered in his veins; he shook it off and kept going. Wondering and fretting never did anyone any good, least of all Tahl—she liked her independence precisely because she detested a slow partner. Qui-Gon was one of the few who held the dubious honor of being quick enough (and sometimes reckless enough) to match her.

He tilted his head back. There—a ledge above him. Without hesitating he leaned hard into the well of the Force and launched himself almost directly upwards, landing catlike on the slippery rock. From here he could see the crashed ship below him and a little off to the side—it looked even worse from this angle.

And then he saw it.

A line of narrow booted footprints, trailing faintly ahead of him, half-erased by the stirred-up snow, and the deep crevice in the rock that they had walked directly into.

“Tahl!” Qui-Gon sprang forward and landed in a crouch next to the edge, expecting to look and see her lying in the pit, perhaps with her leg trapped, or with a head injury, or merely pissed off.

Instead he saw a crevasse that went down into shadowy darkness at least ten meters deep, carved into walls of solid ice.

It had probably been here for years, slowly covered by a layer of ice that had snapped under his friend’s weight.

“ _Tahl_ ,” he called again.

If she answered, he could not hear above the wind. Although unless he was mistaken, the wind was getting softer every second. The energy in the air was fading—the storm was almost past. Still, Knight Uvain was not responding, and there was no sign she had escaped the icy trap.

There was nothing for it then—he would have to jump too and hope for the best.

But then again—the crash. Could he really justify a possibly critical delay to the search and rescue in order to search for a missing partner? She was a Jedi Knight. She understood the risks, took the same vows, agreed to this very mission the same as he had. And Feemor as well.

No.

Growling, Qui-Gon took a step backwards, readied himself, and then launched himself once again into open air. He landed in the midst of the debris in a swirl of snow-laden cloak and coat and ignited his lightsaber. If he was going to find anyone alive, he would need light and heat.

And he _needed_ to find someone alive.

Multiple someones, in fact.

* * *

Feemor fought half-blind. He was in the thick of the storm now, he could sense it. His deep blue saber, a brilliant shade that normally brought to mind birds’ plumage and the fine fabrics that were so popular on Pantora, Alderaan, and Naboo, was barely visible in the unending hurricane of flying ice. Even through his thick clothing he was starting to slow down from sheer numbing cold.

Only his utter focus, his senses in the Force and otherwise, and possibly a dash of luck, kept him from severing off one of his own limbs.

The snarling predator—a wampa, he now recalled—and oh, hooray, what a time to recall that useful little fact—kept vanishing behind curtains of snow and then lashing out at the Padawan with its long claws and heavy arms and legs.

Ice was beginning to build on his goggles.

Steadying himself, Feemor rolled to avoid a vicious swipe and levelled the Force around him—there was a flash of warmth in front of him, sending relief rushing into his weakened wrists and arms and melting away some of the snow obscuring his vision.

Another brutal swipe from the right—Feemor ducked beneath it and lashed out with his lightsaber.

One furry leg appeared out of nowhere and caught him hard beneath his ribs.

All the air rushed from him. The young Jedi fell to his knees, unbalanced and winded.

When the next strike came, he severed off the oncoming arm with a precise sweep of his saber. Even through the snow he could smell burnt hair and charred flesh, could hear the pained roar.

What he did not see was the other arm descending on his unprotected side.

It hit him across the face with such force that he went flying ten feet and collapsed face-down in a snowdrift.

Feemor rolled over, gasping for air, reaching out blindly for his lightsaber that had been knocked from his hand—the wampa emerged from the storm, towering over him, missing one arm and howling with rage and bloodlust.

The other arm descended, and bloody claws pierced right through the Jedi’s coat.

Feemor cried out.

* * *

Tahl glared at her foot.

“Blasted traitor. You’re meant to be on my side. Attached to my leg, in fact, and going where I want you to go!”

She was whining a little and she knew it. Knight Uvain put it down as injury and exposure to cold.

And extreme frustration, from being stuck at the bottom of a pit she could easily have avoided if she’d only been paying attention, and now here she was approximately sixteen meters down in a wedge-shaped crevasse that was wide open at the top and very narrow indeed at the bottom—hence the trapped foot.

The foot was swollen from the impact. Fracture, maybe a break. It was impossible to tell through the boot, the numbing ice surrounding it, and her inability to extract it for a proper examination.

The Jedi estimated that she had lost consciousness upon impact, but briefly. Perhaps a minute, maybe two. After that she had taken stock of her surroundings and immediately discovered that she was facedown in ice.

It had taken another fifteen minutes just to get herself upright without breaking anything, but the one blasted Force-forsaken foot would not budge. At some point, maybe another five minutes later, she had thought she could hear someone calling her name. She called back, but her voice was rough from cold and whoever it was seemed not to hear her at all. Still, she was very close to the crash site and she had been dropping her coordinates, which meant the men would find her sooner or later.

“Still,” she mused aloud. “Can’t wait around for them all day.”

Tahl Uvain had many skills. She was intimidatingly clever, almost rudely sharp of tongue, a formidable duelist, and frankly, a damn good singer. (That last bit was something of a secret but she was still proud of it.)

One of her few failings, and one that had nearly made her unfit for the Trials, was her inconsistency with fine Force manipulation.

She could throw fifteen men backwards like a bomb had gone off. Wrench doors off their hinges. Yank a weapon away from someone ten meters away.

What she struggled with was the delicate stuff. Turning machinery off and on, lifting and moving objects smaller than the average person’s head, and generally just anything doing anything delicate with the Force.

It wasn’t often a problem, especially when she so often paired with people like Micah Giiett, Qui-Gon Jinn, and Adi Gallia, all of whom excelled at Force-manipulations of any kind. Even steady, by-the-book, reading-books-in-the-gardens Feemor Ar’Gall was adept at fine trickery.

But right now there was no help for it.

She had to break the ice around her foot without shattering her bones or bringing the walls down on her head, and she had to do it now. The air down here was thin and she had a feeling that remaining down here was putting the whole mission at risk.

Unacceptable.

“ _Ashla help me_ ,” she murmured.

Tahl stretched out one strong brown hand and held it as close as she could to the offended leg; her side and neck burned from the awkward contortions she had to employ, but she released the discomfort into the Force. It was nothing. Nothing to the goal, to the mission.

Neither was her throbbing ankle.

Nor were the icy walls closing in around her.

Size matters not.

Tahl grit her teeth, then relaxed, searching in the Force, seeking weaknesses, tiny flaws, nothing major. Just enough to move her foot. Just enough.

There was a soft hiss, a series of small crackling noises, and when she opened her golden-green eyes, there was a neat hole around her leg.

Tahl smiled. “Now,” she told herself, getting gingerly up on her one good foot and looking up, up the way she had fallen—“to climb.”

* * *

Qui-Gon clambered back onto the fateful ledge with a lingering sigh.

It was not the first he had given in the past five or so minutes.

The wreck was truly that—a wreck. The scientific cruiser must have been suffering some kind of fuel leak or other issue—a different team could evaluate that later—but whatever the cause, they had dipped too low into Hoth’s atmosphere. Their ship had hit the side of the mountain at high speed and then dropped down to this craggy hilltop; it had burst open like a smashed eggshell. What little remained intact on the interior must have had strong insulation, likely to aid in hostile environments from the outside or mishaps with experiments on the inside, but even that had not lasted long in the unrelenting cold.

All eight crew members, from the Senator’s son to the intern, had been discovered within the crash region, all of them frozen solid, most of them badly injured, too. Three of the scientists had almost certainly perished on impact.

It was a nasty, disheartening discovery. A failed mission, failed long before it had ever really begun. And the loss of life… Qui-Gon sighed yet again.

And—

Three Jedi sent here urgently for no reason, separated by necessity, and from one bond he felt only distant discomfort, and from the other…

His chest tightened again. Somewhere along the line, he had lost track of his Padawan almost completely. There was nearly nothing down their bond.

It wasn’t one of the strongest to begin with—they communicated and worked together so well in person that it hardly seemed to matter—but it only allowed mental speech over short distances and traded images tend to come through in fragments. Emotions and physical feelings like pain or heat or cold came through well enough.

But right now there was nothing, and it was making the young Master very nervous indeed.

“Excuse me, sir with the blank expression?” called a familiar, honey-toned voice. “In need of a little assistance?”

Qui-Gon jerked around and spotted her—Tahl, standing a little awkwardly only a few meters away, favoring one leg and looking disgruntled.

“You’re all right,” he erupted, a wave of relief running through him, as welcome as warmth. He hurried towards her. “Or—what happened to your leg? I found your track leading right up to a crack in the ice, but I—I pushed ahead with the mission—”

She gave him a slight smile. “Which is exactly what you ought to have done, old man. What did you discover?”

He grimaced.

She winced and bowed her head. “We’ll need to contact Coruscant at once; they’ll need to inform the Fodans. Can we extract any of the remains? We prepped the shuttle for it.”

“We can, and I’m afraid that if we left any of them they’d be lost to the snows within a few rotations, which is how long it will take the proper services to arrive.” Jinn ran a hand down his face. “There’s nothing we can do for them until this storm passes, from here and from where we left the shuttle. But Tahl—”

She raised an eyebrow at his abrupt halt.

“…Yes?”

Qui-Gon met her eyes with his own worried blue ones. “I can’t feel Feemor. He was attacked by—something—and then…”

Her eyes filled with concern to match his own.

“Qui-Gon—I can’t move very quickly on this ankle. I’ve expended a lot of energy on keeping warm and getting myself out of that crevasse—I think I need to stay here with the remains while you go after him. Come back for me when you’ve found him and our shuttle.”

The tall human looked uncertain. “I—”

“Qui-Gon, I know you don’t want to split up again, but I will be perfectly safe here. I can settle myself inside what’s left of the ship for some insulation and keep my back to the wall. The storm has almost passed this spot. Feemor is out in the middle of it with something undoubtedly carnivorous. You have to find him fast.”

On impulse, he stepped forward and took both her slim dark hands in his larger ones. There was a pulse of warmth that burst between them that had nothing to do with skin contact and everything to do with the way he was looking down at her.

Tahl removed her hands, ignoring the flash of hurt and resignation in her friend’s eyes. “ _Go_.”

He ran.

* * *

Tahl stiffened.

Her pairbond with Qui-Gon was a thin wire in the Force, a carefully controlled and monitored link between two dear friends. It was even thinner than his bond with his Padawan.

But it was enough for her, sitting in light meditation inside a destroyed ship, to see it, to _feel_ it, when Qui-Gon saw the snarling, shambling form of a full-grown wampa crouched in the snow—it was missing one arm, its fur splattered with bright red blood, and its teeth dripped _red_. Between its jaws hung a very tattered, very bloodstained fur-lined coat that they had last seen wrapped around Feemor Ar'Gall as he smiled at Qui-Gon and turned to walk away, alone, into the hostile cold of Hoth.

Tahl lurched from her mediation with a gasp.

Twenty-seven-year-old Qui-Gon Jinn, Jedi Knight for five years and a Master to an unusual Padawan for four, lit his bright green saber and screamed louder than the snowstorm—“ ** _Feemor!_** ”


	3. Snowfall - Part II

The Jedi Master swung his verdant lightsaber threateningly, carving wide patterns in the snow-filled air.

The wampa roared, displaying the _red_ still staining its jaws, jarring against the unyielding white all around. The blood streaked through its fur was sickening.

Qui-Gon fell into a ready stance, brimming with all the anticipation and flowing energy that Ataru relied on. That _he_ relied on.

He couldn’t see—a body— _Feemor_ —through the snow, but he suspected the carnivore was blocking the view that he did not want to see—

—But he needed to see.

Needed to know.

He darted forward, saber twirling, funneling all of the acrobatics that he normally balanced between his footwork and his saber work into this single attack. The snow-dwelling beast jumped to its feet in a flurry of ice, lashing out with its remaining arm, claws extended.

Jinn swung his lightsaber. He missed by inches; he singed fur but all it did was infuriate the creature.

He reversed the swing—only to slip on the ice like a _fool_ and miss again.

Qui-Gon was working hard to contain his emotions—anger, fear, guilt, horror—into something that could feasibly be released into the Force.

It was difficult.

Every time he managed to push some of it away, more came rushing in. The storm, the wampa, the blood, the—the glimpse of something dark huddled in the snow, motionless, giving off no flare of life—

Qui-Gon leapt backwards to avoid a slash and brought the pommel of his weapon against the wampa’s skull with an audible crack. The creature howled in confusion and pain; wincing, the Jedi pressed a hand towards the fallen beast and _pushed_ with the Force.

There were two primary obstacles in successfully Force-suggesting, or mind-tricking, another living being. First, the strong of mind—those naturally strong-willed or who had been trained in Force-shielding—took great care and effort to defeat. It was incredibly difficult to trick someone of that kind without them at least noticing something fishy. The second was instinct. It was nigh on impossible to override a mind in the throes of pure, focused instinct—survival, protection, the need to eat, even bloodlust—they were almost impenetrable.

The wampa was certainly caught up in several of those core instincts.

But Qui-Gon Jinn was utterly determined, and after almost fifteen seconds of careful shoving, the Hoth creature curled up, injured but safely asleep in a hollow in the ground, shielded from the still-swirling storm. It was a merciful end to the fight. 

Qui-Gon’s gloved hand tightened on his lightsaber.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he turned his head to look at the bleeding mass on the ground, next to what remained of the coat.

It was a snow-boar.

It was dead, shredded to pieces—a rare enough creature even on Hoth, which was so sparsely populated already by wampas and tauntauns—and it was _not Feemor_.

If the boar was dinner, then what was Feemor?

Qui-Gon dove for the discarded coat, suddenly convinced that he would panic unless he held it. The dark grey fabric was matted with snow and darkened with patches of smeared blood, and it was impossible to tell who had bled on the fabric. All of it was red. It could have been the boar’s, or the wampa’s, or Feemor’s.

Breathing deeply, the Knight clenched his fist into the coat and closed his eyes. Waiting. Breathing. Reaching out.

There had to be some sign.

This had to be the unexpected foe his Padawan had encountered in the storm, and his coat was still here, so where was he?

From somewhere deep in his memories he thought he recalled something vague about wampa predator habits. But what was it? They—buried their food in the snow?

Oh, _Force_ , no.

No— _no_ , he told himself, struggling again for clarity. Not bury.

Caves.

Wampas lived in caves—it made sense that captured prey would be trapped there until a more convenient moment. If the Padawan had put up too much of a fight, it was entirely probable that he had been temporarily abandoned in favor of less deadly prey, such as the snow-boar.

Qui-Gon simply had to hope that he had been not too badly harmed before that decision was reached.

He looked around keenly, peering through the slowly-lessening snowstorm, looking for—

…There. A low line of ice-covered hills littered with boulders. A perfectly reasonable place to expect to find caves.

He ran.

* * *

Feemor was walking.

Walking, half falling, his head spinning. Strangely enough, the claw marks down his limbs no longer burned or itched. They simply were, and if he had to pin a name to the feeling they gave him, it was _weird_.

He felt too tall for his body. He kept looking down at his feet and being surprised at how tall he was, although he was pretty sure he’d stopped growing a few years back. At least.

No…was that right? Master Ko was always reminding him to keep his brain in order. No. Not his brain. His holobooks. They were always scattered everywhere across their quarters, one or two on the carpet, a few in the kitchen, many laid all over his bedroom marked open to various pages, and usually one lost between the sofa cushions.

Master Jinn found it amusing.

Fair was fair, Master Ko was always leaving his socks everywhere.

No. Master Ko was ridiculously neat. Not utilitarian, military clean, but tidy and organized and never dusty.

It was Qui-Gon who left boots by the door and socks on the carpet.

Which Master came first?

Feemor stopped walking.

He was staring blankly at a wall made of ice. He wondered when that had gotten there; he had nearly walked right into it.

And—what?

What had he just asked himself about his Masters? Which came first? That was an absurd question. Of course he knew which was which.

…Only, he didn’t.

Through the dizziness, Feemor felt a ripple of _fear_.

The fear was quickly overwritten by a sudden strangling sensation. _It was too hot._ Why was he wearing so many blasted layers? It was so _unbearably_ hot. The ice would help. Touching the snow with his bare skin, that would be bliss, that would ease this cursed heatwave.

And once he was cool again, just the right temperature, he was sure his mind would clear and he would be able to find his Master.

He hoped.

* * *

Qui-Gon slipped between a gap in the walls of white-coated stone and forced himself through a narrow breach with some difficulty. After a few seconds he tumbled out into a large cavern draped in ice and shadows, and utterly void of any sign of life. The snow on the ground looked as if it had hardly been disturbed in centuries.

It made sense. Anything small enough to fit through the gap he had just entered through would not be a cave-dwelling mass predator.

No time to lose.

He turned on his heel and went back the way he had come, emerging back into the dying storm. As the clouds passed and the winds began to die, he could see more of Hoth opening up all around him once more—in the distance, he could see the ship, and beyond that a faint grey smudge that was the foothills where the crash site, and Tahl, were concealed.

Murmuring a brief prayer, Jinn continued following the line of icy hillocks and ridges, searching for more openings.

The second cave was very low to the ground, much too low for the tall Knight to enter while standing, much less a full-grown wampa.

The third had a wide opening with snow drifts built all the way up to the ceiling.

The fourth was promising.

The mouth of the cave was wide enough for easy entry, but narrow enough to prevent snow from entering in large amounts. He hurried inside and found the wampa’s den. It was not much to look at—high icy walls, a few pillars of snow, a pile of shredded fur, and a bloody patch on the floor around the old, rotting carcass of a tauntaun.

No Feemor.

No sign of him whatsoever.

Even if he had been—

—there would have been traces…pieces…bits of clothing at least. The wampa kind was not a neat eater. But there was nothing, not even trails indicating that something had recently been dragged in here as prey.

Combined with the flashes Qui-Gon had received of the wampa’s initial attack, the creature’s missing arm and the scorch marks in its fur, and the ruined coat…

Feemor had escaped.

The _elation_ of that realization would have sent the young Knight reeling were it not for the inevitable conclusion:

If Feemor was still unreachable through the bond, and had shed the coat and enough of his blood to cause pain and stain the snow, then he had escaped the wampa’s attack during the snowstorm and not returned to the ship.

He was out there in the deadly cold of Hoth, alone and injured.

/ _Tahl?_ / he called down their quiet bond. Their pairbond was fainter than the one he shared with his Padawan, but it was capable of basic communication. Assuming she was not absorbed in meditation.

/ _Qui-Gon?_ /

He let out a huff of relief that sent a warm cloud drifting through the air; he reverted back to the comm unit now that he had her attention and knew she was fully cognizant. “Tahl. I took care of the wampa. Feemor took one of its arms off, but it seems he escaped and then wandered into the storm. I didn’t see any sign of his tracks and he’s most definitely injured.”

There was a brief pause.

“How close are you to the ship?”

Her confident, practical tone helped ease the swell of worry that had first blossomed when both bonds had gone quiet and never stopped since. “I could be there in about twenty minutes, maybe a little less, running.”

“…That’s too long. And it’s not wise for you to run using Force-enhanced speed—you’ve already used up quite a bit today and we can’t afford to have you collapsing. I will walk to the ship myself.”

“What?” he bit out. “Tahl, you’re about three-quarters of an hour away even without the snowstorm, and with your ankle—”

“I’ve done some good to it through a light healing trance,” she responded. “There are scattered supplies here; I can easily scrounge up a bind. It will be fine. I will go to the ship and send out the distress signal. At the very least, the Fodan relief ship cannot be far off now, and Master Poof intended to send further Jedi aid. We were not the best equipped team, merely the closest. Once I’m at the ship we have a good shot at receiving aid before nightfall, and I’ll be safer in the warm than here at the crash site,” Tahl reminded him with finality, stymieing his protests before they could be voiced.

“Now,” she said, “I’m already binding up my ankle. Go find your Padawan.”

“Tahl—”

“ _Now!_ ”

He retraced his steps back to the unconscious wampa and its unfortunate dinner, shouting, “I was going to say thank you, old friend!”

“Now that you’re allowed to do.” Tahl chuckled lightly. “Just don’t waste time!”

* * *

Feemor had been wrong. Hoth wasn’t too cold at all, it was much too warm. Maybe that was because he was bleeding. Did bleeding make one warmer? Or colder?

He stopped to lean down and poke at one of the long scratches running up his legs. His gloved fingertip sank into open, wounded flesh. It didn’t hurt at all. The wound was congealing, too, and that was good. Probably.

The snowstorm had passed, or he had passed out from under it, and now he was walking up a steep slope of compacted ice.

He had been hoping to come across the ship, but figured he had missed it in the storm.

Feemor was hoping, really hoping, that these were the snowy foothills where the crash was, where Tahl and Qui-Gon were, although his comm had been lost along with his coat—and by the Force he could not recall how he had lost those two things and not his life—and he was having trouble, still, accessing his training bond.

He knew something was wrong.

Not just with the mission, which had seemed unlikely and uncomfortable from the beginning.

But with _him_.

The complication was that he didn’t know what was wrong with him or how to fix it.

/ _Master_ ,/ he tried, / _Master, can you hear me?_ / Even if they often struggled to communicate with full words over the training bond, they could still communicate in the ways that mattered. Impressions, feelings, the need for _help_. Qui-Gon should be able to hear that.

But it was like talking into the wind, or speaking underwater. His voice went out and was immediately lost.

His head felt…strange.

Feemor turned uncertainly on the spot, shuffling his boots in the snow, searching the horizon. He spun around once. Or had he? Maybe he had only spun halfway? He kept turning, but no matter how often or how hard he looked, the scenery never seemed to get more comprehensible or familiar.

That was bad. He knew it.

He needed to do something, anything that wasn’t complete nonsense. There was no ship in sight, no crash, no Qui-Gon Jinn or Tahl Uvain. Luckily there didn’t seem to be anymore snow-dwelling beasts either, but his luck had not been strong today.

Feemor ignited his deep blue lightsaber and raised it.

It might attract predators.

It might also guide his friends to him, which would be nice, because he was suddenly certain that he could walk no farther. He dragged himself over to the nearest hill and clawed and scrabbled his way up to the top, looking around again for anything familiar. There was nothing, and so he waited, lightsaber pulsing and shining, for help to come to him.

* * *

Qui-Gon saw it.

Not so far away, a little to his left, the unmistakable flare of his Padawan’s royal blue lightsaber suddenly burst to life, hovering in seemingly midair. No, not midair—it was being held upright like a beacon from the top of a snowy hill. Feemor must be just out of view, partially hidden by another hill—

/ _Feemor!_ /

Still nothing.

/ _Stay right where you are, I can see you, I’m coming,_ / he said anyway, desperately hoping. / _Don’t move, don’t move, please stay still. We’re nearly finished here._ /

The lightsaber remained steady, a clear signpost for him to follow, and he did, almost flying across the freshly stirred snow, determined to find his Padawan once and for all and get the both of them back to the ship.

The relief ships had better arrive swiftly, because Jinn was ready to get his apprentice and his mission partner away from this cursed, barren, excuse for a planet and back to somewhere warm with medical oversight.

It wouldn’t be long now.

No sooner had he thought that than the lightsaber suddenly vanished.

“Wait!” Qui-Gon cried, although there was nobody near enough to hear. He sped up, his limbs burning from all the extended effort he had put them through today, only able to hear the sound of his own breathing and the thunder of his footsteps, only able to focus his eyes on the suddenly vacant hilltop.

When he finally reached the base of the hill he yelled out, “Feemor!”

Still no reply. No response over the training bond, either, despite the lack of distance. Even if the younger man had disengaged his saber and walked away down the other side of the hill, there was no way he had gotten far enough for geographic distance to be blocking their link.

The Knight ran up the hill, sending snow flying in all directions.

His heart fell right into his stomach.

The hilltop wasn’t empty after all.

Feemor was lying on his side, clutching his disengaged lightsaber with one hand, flushed with fever and mumbling incoherently. There was ice in his bright blonde hair and matted into his thin, soaked Jedi robe; his lips were blue.

“Feemor? Padawan!” Qui-Gon rushed to him and stooped next to his apprentice, deeply alarmed. The alarm became fear when the younger man did not respond at all to his voice or his presence. Feemor simply curled in on himself, muttering under his breath. He looked terribly ill.

There was nothing else to be done. Without hesitation, Qui-Gon took his Padawan’s lightsaber and clipped it beside his own, and then took up the Padawan himself and put him over his shoulder. Feemor cried out—in panic or pain it was impossible to tell—and Qui-Gon ran full speed back towards the distant shuttle, praying for all it was worth that help was on the way.

* * *

Tahl opened the shuttle’s hatch when she sensed Qui-Gon approaching. Their shared bond, built up and carefully tended over almost thirty years of friendship, was thrumming with urgency, and she hastened to meet him, ignoring her still-aching leg.

“Qui—”

He blew past her, lowering an unconscious Feemor from his shoulder and depositing him in one of the well-worn bunks the ship had to offer. The Knight began divesting his apprentice of his ice-coated boots and cloak and then went to work on the socks and robes, soaked through with snow and sweat. Feemor was pale as a ghost but his cheeks burned with fever and his eyelids and lips were almost bruised with blue.

“There’s something wrong,” her friend said curtly. “He’s feverish, but his bond is still completely closed to me, and his heart-rate keeps fluctuating. I’d call it hypothermia but there are strange symptoms—”

Tahl went around to stand next to Feemor’s head as Qui-Gon removed the last of the clothing and then turned and began digging for new, dry items. In a less serious situation there would have been jests about all the teasing Feemor would endure after this, but—Jinn was right, something was very wrong here, something beyond the norm.

Tahl cupped Feemor’s face in her hands, ignoring the mingled cold and heat rolling off him in waves, and closed her eyes. She sank into the Force, searching Feemor’s signature with her own.

When she resurfaced, Qui-Gon had re-clothed Feemor in warm robes and was in the act of sanitizing the numerous cuts inflicted on the young man’s limbs. He looked up at her when she opened her eyes, his gaze searching. She pursed her lips. “Qui-Gon, I think—I think he’s suffering from severe Force exhaustion.” He looked both concerned and relieved at the diagnosis, but she held up a hand to prevent a response and forced herself to keep talking. “…And I think he’s still draining himself as we speak. I can’t get through to him to make him stop. I gave him some of my own energy, but even if you and I both depleted ourselves to unconsciousness—he’s just…he’s like a sieve.”

Unadulterated horror filled his dark blue eyes. “But—but—what—” he sputtered, for once lost for words.

She kept one hand on Feemor, trailing it from his cheek and burying her fingers in his hair, but the other hand moved to rest on Qui-Gon’s shoulder. “I don’t know. I think you should take a look. This is the Living Force, after all, and you share a link with him.”

Her friend nodded hastily and stood; without speaking they switched places, Tahl taking up kneeling at the foot of the bed with the meager medical supplies and Qui-Gon kneeling at the head of the bed, resting one large hand on Feemor’s forehead and the other over his heart.

He closed his eyes.

Tahl was patient. She carefully disinfected each and every injury she found, and then set about covering them in bandages, bindings, and a stitch-tape for the more severe claw marks. When that was finished she went deeper into the ship to the fresher, found the small available water supply, ran it through a sanitizing cycle, and then heated it up.

Tahl had just begun to wash Feemor’s cold-burned feet with a warm, damp cloth when Qui-Gon resurfaced from meditation. Violently.

He jerked back, his hands moving from Feemor to cover his own face.

“What is it?” Tahl asked quickly. “What’s happening?”

Qui-Gon did not immediately reply. He had his face hidden in his hands, and when he looked up he appeared haggard, as if he had not slept for days, with dark shadows beneath his eyes. “We cannot wait for a relief ship. We need to hyperjump to the nearest green planet that has at least a Class-1A medical system, **_now_**.”

“Going,” said Tahl, racing to the cockpit. With a few expert movements she had the shuttle rising off-planet, blasting the sublight engines to their fullest extent. As the ship rose through the atmosphere, Tahl sent off a message to the Council and the Fodans declaring the need for an emergency self-evacuation for the safety of one of their members, directing the relief ships to the coordinates of the crash site upon their arrival. It was a rude gesture at best to abandon the somber mission so abruptly, but Tahl believed down to her core that they had little choice. She could have waited on Hoth for the relief, but there was no guarantee they would have arrived before she froze to death overnight, or over several nights. They needed to go and they needed to go at once.

She slammed the shuttle into hyperspeed and the whole thing jerked roughly in space, straining its capabilities at her irascible command.

When she glanced over her shoulder it was to find Qui-Gon once again deep in meditation, desperately trying to keep Feemor alive long enough for whatever attention he so sorely needed. Tahl’s eyes burned and she blinked hard to chase the sensation away, dropping into the pilot’s seat and dividing her attention between two crucial tasks: pouring energy down her bond with Qui-Gon to supplement him, and navigating their shuttle.

“All right,” she whispered. “Please, _Ashla_ , let us get to Naboo in time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter this time. Next update soon!


	4. Snowfall - Part III

The hyperspace jump between Hoth and Naboo was a two-day journey in a cruiser. In this rundown shuttle, it was a three-day trip.

They were only halfway there, and completely exhausted, every nerve fried.

The two Jedi Knights were taking shifts between monitoring the ship, feeding energy into the unconscious vacuum that was Feemor Ar’Gall, and snatching a few hours of rest. It was incredibly difficult—the most important thing was that Feemor was never unmonitored, never without access to someone’s offered energies, but if they didn’t rest, they’d have very little to offer him.

The shuttle had capable autopilot, but it was simply poor sense to leave a ship unattended for too long.

Both Tahl and Qui-Gon were drawn, pale, and clumsier than usual. Tahl had a semi-permanent headache just above her left eye that only her brief rest periods could ease.

Qui-Gon had barely spoken since takeoff. He had not asked where they were going, only when they would arrive, trusting her expertise. The only expressions he seemed capable of displaying were intense concentration, exhaustion, and guilt. It rolled off him in waves whenever he was not sleeping, and no matter what his friend said or did, he could not seem to shake it.

Still, Tahl tried.

At the beginning of the third day, less than twenty hours until they would reach their destination, she left the pilot’s chair briefly to use the refresher and came to sit beside him as he meditated beside Feemor, who looked worse than either of them, the feverish flush still there despite the actual fever having broken and his cheeks hollowed out as if he had gone hungry for weeks. His Master had one hand curled around the younger man’s wrist—skin contact was often helpful for shared meditations and energy transfers, and with Feemor unable to reciprocate…it was almost necessary.

Tahl sat down beside Qui-Gon.

He continued to meditate, and she could sense the steady trickle of power drifting from Master to Padawan. Just enough to stop him from fading away entirely. If they broke their rigorous cycle, Feemor could slip away within an _hour_. Maybe less.

“He’s your first Padawan,” Tahl said quietly, not looking at the man meditating at her shoulder. She focused on the woolen blanket draped over Feemor’s legs, idly absorbed in its worn brown threads. “Your _first_ apprentice, and he’s a transferred apprentice at that. He’s a friend. A compatriot, almost a peer—more like a brother Padawan than a Padawan, but he’s still yours. Your responsibility, your choice…yours to care for and guide.”

She swallowed, thinking hard, measuring her words before she spoke them. “He’s a Senior Padawan. Not too much longer and he’ll be ready for his Trials; he’s so reliably good, so honest and level-headed. His worst injury on record was a broken leg on a mission with Ko to Malastare. Even his shattered bond wasn’t enough to deter him. It’s why you were so sure about him, Qui, why you stepped into his room in the Halls of Healing and just _knew_. He’s strong, he’s steady and compassionate. This is the first time he’s ever run into serious trouble…fallen into serious harm. It is _not_ your fault.”

She had not been sure that he was listening to her until his forehead creased as he frowned. “…It’s not his fault, either. He was confused, hypothermic—he ran into a _wampa_ in a _Hoth snowstorm_ , Tahl.”

It was not the first time he had spoken sharply to her, but it was a rare enough occurrence for it to sting.

She pushed the petty hurt aside, breathing it out into the Force.

“I know it’s not his fault. I doubt either of us would have fared much better. Wampas are naturally Force-concealed, you know—they’re hard to anticipate even without a snowstorm. My point is—you can’t wallow in self-blame. It does no good to anyone, and he won’t appreciate it. All he needs right now is positive energy. You can’t allow guilt to get tangled up in the things you send him.”

Qui-Gon did not open his eyes, but he stiffened. For a moment she thought he might actually get angry with her, but he slumped again, still hovering between wakefulness and meditation. “…I will stop.”

She noticed that he only promised to stop _exuding_ guilt, not that he would try to comprehend that he wasn’t at fault.

Feemor would set him straight, when he woke.

Tahl returned to the cockpit, feeing her joints ache as if she had aged decades in the past two days. Both her human species and Qui-Gon’s were long-lived—the average human lifespan was ninety years. For a human Jedi, it was often over a century. Noorians like herself could easily live to one-hundred-twenty, and while Qui-Gon’s genetic history was more muddled, the Healers estimated his lifespan to safely reach one-hundred-forty.

Old joints were not something she wanted to deal with ever, much less now.

But what mattered most was making sure Feemor got to live out all his days, each and every one. He’d come so far.

Been chosen as a Padawan. Survived brutally losing his first Master. Bonded with his new Master. Overcome diplomatic entanglements many didn’t deal with until Knighthood.

They would not lose him to Sith-damned _Hoth_.

Stupid, fucking ice cube.

(The cursing that the Masters so frowned upon was perfectly acceptable inside her head, and she would tell herself that until someone called her out on it.)

* * *

Tahl could have started singing at the sight of Naboo, hanging like a beautiful jade stone, lit up dramatically by its sun. She had never been to the Core-distant planet before, but she’d heard stories of its unusual beauty and unique system of governance.

Right now what mattered was its medical offerings—and, apparently, its greenery. Qui-Gon had asked for a green, thriving planet, and Naboo was certainly that.

The Jedi Knight employed emergency protocols and reached out to the Theed service towers before they reached out to her. “Greetings, Theed Operations,” she said as politely as she could manage, jaw aching just from the effort of speaking. “This is space shuttle SHV-4028, Jedi transport craft. We have rerouted from a deployment to Hoth and are in need of emergency medical services. Please respond.”

The callback was immediate. The comms crackled to life and a calm, warmly accented voice said: “Acknowledged, Jedi craft SHV. Please proceed to docking bay Kwilaan-Besh. Can I transfer precise coordinates?”

“Yes, please,” Tahl exhaled, relieved.

“How many crew members, and how many injured, Master Jedi?”

“Three crew. One severely injured, two primarily in need of rest.”

“We will have emergency services awaiting your shuttle. Would you prefer a discreet escort?”

“If possible.”

“Absolutely. We await your arrival.”

“Thank you,” she said fervently.

The Naboo’s voice was kind. “Naboo is pleased to assist the Jedi Order.”

They signed off, and Tahl sank back in the synth-leather chair, every muscle in her back aching. The amount of energy she had given to Feemor—if she had done it all at once, she would have been dead twice over. Qui-Gon had given more.

“We’re descending over Naboo,” she called out. “Emergency services will be waiting.”

Qui-Gon startled her by appearing in the doorway with Feemor cradled in his arms like a child. The Master looked ill, sallow and sleep-deprived.

The Padawan looked like death warmed over.

“We will need them, but not at first. Which landing bay?”

Tahl frowned but simply said, “Kwilaan-Besh.”

He nodded once. “Good.”

Feemor was struggling for breath by the time they landed; Qui-Gon clutched his apprentice tightly and continued to breathe energy into the younger man’s lax form. But the Knight’s face was calmer than it had been, more certain, less strained.

Tahl still didn’t understand what was happening, but she trusted Qui-Gon Jinn.

So when the shuttle touched down and she turned in the pilot’s chair to see her friend racing down the ramp with his apprentice in his arms and running straight past the emergency services, Tahl simply followed him, heart thundering.

* * *

Qui-Gon forced himself not to use Force-speed, reminding himself that he needed to conserve his energies for more important things. They were close.

_So close._

There were people shouting, running after him, but the only two people that mattered were the unconscious man fading away in his arms and the familiar glow of Tahl Unvain chasing him, keeping close to them both.

Qui-Gon barreled across polished durasteel and smooth stone walkways, directly across the platform, his strength flagging as the days of endless energy expense and brief rest periods tore at him; his boots thundered across the hard surface and then quite abruptly he was running across lush green grass.

The Jedi ran to the heart of the largest gardens the city of Theed had to offer and fell to his knees, gently setting Feemor down directly onto the grass, his pale form dappled with sunlight that fell between the gleaming leaves of trees young and old, the air around them fragrant with rich soil, blossoming flowers, fresh fruit, filled with the sounds of nearby voices, the hum insects and the soft rustlings of winged creatures.

Qui-Gon kneeled over his dying Padawan and gripped his slack shoulders tightly with hands that were suddenly full of strength.

“You’re going to have to trust me, Feemor,” he murmured. “Let me through the bond. You’re so close to Knighthood, my friend, but there is a lesson I must teach you, now.”

Loud voices kept interrupting his focus. Concerned, well-intentioned bystanders were pressing around—not too close, but still disruptive—they were worried, the natural hospitality of the Naboo culture working against them.

“Please, everyone, give them space,” said a woman’s voice. She was on the edges of his peripheral vision, but Qui-Gon caught a glimpse of dark hair and long, sweeping silver skirts. An aristocrat. She certainly had the poise and gently authoritative tone of one. “The Jedi need room, please grant it to them. Quickly now.”

The crowd began to disperse, murmuring words of support and encouragement, and as usual Qui-Gon found himself warmed by the regard and innate compassion of sentient beings. The woman drifted out of sight, saying, “There are emergency crews awaiting your word, Master Jedi. Best of luck to you.”

“Thank you,” he called after her, not taking his eyes away from the Padawan’s pale face.

He sank into meditation, and then pressed along the training bond he shared with Feemor Ar’Gall, searching gently but firmly for a response, for an opening. At first there was nothing. Then there were tendrils of warmth, whispers of cognitive thought, a struggle for awareness---

_Master?_

Feemor’s voice was so clear at the moment, if strained and confused; this was perfect, flawless telepathic communication, the kind that they would not be able to share even if their training bond was the level capable of swapping speech.

_Feemor. I need you to listen to me, right now. You’ve been injured and you are very ill._

_Ah. Is that why I feel like this?_

_That’s why,_ Qui-Gon replied, and could not hold back the glow of familiar affection at his Padawan’s level-headed, matter-of-fact humor. _But focus. You started pulling on the Living Force to heal yourself and keep yourself moving, and that was good, and on almost any other planet it would have been fine. But you did so on a planet where there is almost no natural life—no sentients, few beasts, not even any growing things. No flora, no fauna. Padawan, you pulled and pulled on the Living Force to help you and there was so little there—your shields fell down and you started drawing in endlessly after you fell unconscious. Like a black hole._

_That sounds…not good._

_It’s very not good. Nothing we’re giving you is keeping you stable because you’re draining so quickly. None of it is going towards healing, either; you’re funneling it away as if you needed to store it for something. Your body and mind have yet to realize that you’re out of harm’s way, or that you are now surrounded by thriving life—the Living Force is almost overflowing all around you, but you’re still draining._

_…What do I need to do?_

_Let me show you. Follow my lead, and focus on your awareness. You cannot accept energy from the without right now—so you’re going to find it within._

A pause.

Qui-Gon could sense his Padawan struggling to comprehend the situation and his role in it, and to understand that last sentence, which seemed to make no sense. Feemor was slipping further away; on one plane of existence, Qui-Gon clung to the bond; on the other, his hands tightened on Feemor’s shoulders.

_I trust you, Master Qui-Gon._

And then there was light.

* * *

Feemor woke first. He was addled and dazed—he could see and hear and taste and smell everything going on around him, but his mind seemed unable to cope with it as a whole and instead kept launching bits of information at him while withholding the rest.

Sunlight—it was a sunny, warm day—he’d been somewhere cold before, hadn’t he?

Sunlight. That meant they were outside.

He was looking right up into it. The sky. How was he doing that?

There were birds singing, insects buzzing. The air smelled delightful. He would have thought of the countryside but he could also hear spacecraft, speeders, and automated broadcasts—that was familiar.

He was on his back. On his back, on the grass, on the ground, with his tunics on and his boots and tabards and belt but no robes. What was that about?

Oh, the sounds—he was hearing the bustle of a landing platform, a spacecraft bay. How funny that the sounds contrasted so strongly with everything within his range of vision.

There was—

“Qui-Gon? Master!” Feemor sat up, his head spinning nauseatingly, but all he could focus on was his Master, his mentor and friend, lying quite still across his lap as if he had fallen asleep there. He didn’t look hurt—he looked peaceful—but—

Jinn opened his eyes and smiled. “Well then, that worked. What a day.” And then he sat up, tucked an arm around Feemor and pulled him around so that suddenly Feemor was leaning against the older and taller Jedi, firmly caught in a hug. “Do not _ever_ ,” Qui-Gon instructed serenely, “do that to me again, drama child.”

“I’m less dramatic than you by far, old man,” Feemor said, surprising himself by yawning. “I just don’t like the cold.”

He wondered if he had said something wrong, because Qui-Gon stiffened a little, but all he said was: “I don’t think I’m overly fond, either.”

Tahl dropped unexpectedly into the Padawan’s line of vision. She was a sight—she looked completely exhausted, but she glowed like the statues of burnished bronze down in the Archives as the bright sunlight—where were they, anyway?—hit her dark skin and glittered in her black hair; she smiled like she hadn’t laughed in days and pressed a hand gently to Feemor’s face.

He raised his eyebrows at her. “I’m starting to think…” another yawn, “…I missed something?”

Tahl closed her gold-green eyes in exasperation. “Yes, you definitely did. And right now I’m turning you over to medical.” She waved over his shoulder. A group of what were clearly medics all dressed in pale grey and sporting armbands of various colors ranging from cheerful yellow to forest green swarmed around the trio of kneeling, half-collapsed Jedi, all of them speaking quietly and considerately but nevertheless clearly intent on their work.

“Fair enough,” said Feemor, even as Qui-Gon frowned, clearly a little reluctant to release his young friend from his arms—or let go of the hand Tahl had so willingly placed in his own.

* * *

“All right,” Feemor said. “Explaining time.”

Qui-Gon looked up from the datapad in his hands, looking as uncomfortable as ever from his position on the medical bed across from his apprentice’s. Tahl was in the bed next to Feemor, currently enjoying a self-induced healing trance to recuperate from the past few days, monitored by the considerable skills and technology of the Naboo.

“I remember,” Feemor continued, watching his Master, “or I remember most of it. Everything after the first attack is a bit choppy, but I remember—with hindsight, unfortunately—becoming hypothermic and being unable to think or deal with my injuries. I remember the hilltop, but not passing out, and I remember you speaking to me in the gardens.”

Qui-Gon set the datapad aside and nodded slowly, his expression hovering between remembered distress and genuine interest in Feemor’s recollections.

“You said that I was draining energy away, and then you showed me how to pull energy from…” the blonde hesitated. “… _within_.”

“Yes.”

Feemor raised both eyebrows.

Qui-Gon continued waiting.

After a few moments, the younger of the two relented, knowing that Qui-Gon would not answer a question that was not directly asked of him unless he so chose. An unfortunate trait passed down directly from a meddling little troll that some called Yoda.

“How does that work, and why have I not been taught it before?”

The Jedi Knight pushed himself a little higher on his pillows, flashing the medical bed a disgruntled look, before finally responding. “You know that life creates the Force.”

“Yes.”

“And the Force creates life.”

“Yes.”

“What is the universe made of, Padawan?”

“It—" Feemor twiddled his fingers together, feeling the calluses built up over the years from lightsaber work. “It’s made up of planets and stars and their systems, and the vacuum of space and everything in it.”

“And what are all those things made up of?”

This was going to be a fun, short conversation. “Uncountable atoms and molecules and thousands of other structures, some undetectable to our science. Heat. Energy.”

“Uncountable, yes. _Infinite_ , in a few senses, don’t you think? Infinite because we are constantly discovering new types and sizes of structures, sub-atomic and meta-physical, and because we are constantly discovering more of them, more to the galaxy, and because we know that the universe is expanding and new things are coming into being every moment.”

Feemor pondered that for a moment, and then said, “Okay. I understand, I think. Life and everything it is made out of, and therefore the Force, is infinite all around us.”

“Exactly.” Qui-Gon adjusted his pillows again. He really just must be fidgety; Healer’s wards had never made him happy. He liked to be able to move at all times. “Now. What are _you_ made out of?”

Feemor’s mouth opened in surprise as his mind leapt ahead to the inevitable conclusion of this argument. “Our bodies behave like the universe. Made up of systems we can see and those we can’t, and structures we can see and can’t, and things are constantly being made and used up and recycled. You’re saying the Force is just as much inside of us as outside, and just as infinite.” He sounded both impressed and a little appalled. “Again—if this is—why wasn’t I taught—”

His Master shrugged a little. “Obviously our physical bodies are much smaller than the universe. But there are two things that make us just as infinite. Firstly—we are _sentient_ and therefore in touch with the Force in a way that non-sentient life is not. Even a Force-nulls have that advantage. Sentience gives us an ability to communicate with those of our kind and even those not; communication with the Force is one of those things. Secondly,” he plowed ahead while his Padawan was still thinking, concentrating very hard to keep up, “we are part of the grand scheme of things. The Force _flows_ _through_ us all—rocks, plants, beings, Force-sensitives and Force-nulls of all kinds and strengths. We are part of expanding infinity. All I taught you in the garden was to access the Force wells within you, those naturally in place just from you existing in physical form, and those you are blessed with by being a Force-sensitive and having a higher than average midichlorian count.”

“I felt it,” said Feemor. “I didn’t fully understand. But I tapped in to the Force carried inside my physical form, and then I tapped in to the energies that are constantly flowing through me, part of the greater Force. Isn’t that technically the _Cosmic_ Force, not the Living Force?”

Qui-Gon sighed. He ran a large hand across his forehead and stared at his feet beneath the soft coverlets on the bed as if they somehow offended him. Then he returned his gaze to his apprentice.

“That,” said the Jedi, “is why it is not taught. There is no Order-sanctioned consensus on what, exactly, that part of the Force is. It has been debated for centuries on end. Since before the disbanding of the Sith, if I’m not mistaken. The closest thing the Order has to agreement on the subject is a general agreement that it is a dangerous thing to tap in to. It fosters arrogance and bursts of unexpected power, and in those tied to the Cosmic, or Unifying Force, it causes fluctuations in visions.” Qui-Gon’s lip curled a little. “I am too strongly tied to the Living Force for that to make much sense to me. I have no trouble touching the Infinite Well of the Force, but I use it sparingly, as do all who know how. It’s…”

“You taught me another technically-forbidden thing, didn’t you?” Feemor sighed.

His Master smirked. “I taught you another technically-forbidden thing,” he agreed.

The two humans stared one another down before dissolving into quiet laughter.

“So…I’m just supposed to ignore this new aspect of the Force?” Feemor wondered. “What will you say on the mission report? Will this get you censured by the Council?”

“For saving a life? No,” Qui-Gon assured him. “They will probably ask you to not discuss it with your peers, and to undergo training with someone who knows more about it, to make sure you don’t tap into it accidentally or fall to the temptation of using it for self-gain.” He paused, and then smiled at Feemor. “Speaking both as your Master and as your not-so-much-older friend? I trust you entirely.”

The returned flush of healthy color on Feemor’s face made his smile all the brighter. “Thank you, Master.”

Tahl groaned. “Will both of you shut up? I’ve stopped healing and I would like to sleep for real, now.”

Both men went wide-eyed with surprise at the unexpected interruption. They exchanged mirthful looks and both sank into their pillows and light blankets, mutually deciding to try and give sleep a shot as well.

Qui-Gon mouthed, _She’s always cranky when she’s tired._

How Tahl knew what he had silently said without opening her eyes, it was impossible to say. But she obviously had, because a pillow came flying from across the room at incredible speed and _walloped_ Qui-Gon in the face with such force that he was sent backwards onto his bed in a blur of shocked expression and flying brown hair.

Feemor had to clap a hand over his mouth to muffle his laughter, and Tahl smiled even as she settled deeper down into her bed for a solid night of rest.

* * *

“I have been out-argued,” Qui-Gon said, looking both amused and dismayed. “I have been out-maneuvered.”

Tahl laughed. “By whom? The Queen?”

“Queen Ekay, yes, and two Senators. The Senator from Naboo, Jakilla Fornouta, and some Senator from Alderaan and his wife. The last two were the ones who helped us in the garden, with the crowds.”

Feemor smirked up at his Master, still confined to a medical bed on healer’s orders until it was time to depart the planet. “And? What argument did they win?”

“They refused to let us take the shuttle back to Coruscant.”

“What?”

“Yes. They will send a pilot droid back to Coruscant in our shuttle and send us in one of their cruisers. I assured them that we don’t need a medic to accompany us, but they insist we take one of their small highliners. It’s comfortable and fast. The shuttle would take us almost two weeks to return; the cruiser can have us back at the Temple in seven standard days.”

Feemor and Tahl continued to laugh at the famed diplomat’s expense, made all the more amusing by Qui-Gon’s utter bafflement. He was unused to not getting his way in negotiations or on the battlefield, and this peaceful, pacifist planet’s total victory over him was clearly throwing him for a loop.

“Poor us,” said Feemor. “Travelling in luxury. The Council will not approve.”

“Your Council can take up the argument with me,” said a woman’s voice from the doorway. “I’d like to see them try.”

It was the woman from the gardens. She was petite—if she stood next to Qui-Gon the top of her head would not reach his shoulder by several inches. Her complexion was an attractive olive and she had wide dark eyes and heaps of shining, dark hair that was braided in complex patterns across the top of her head and all the way down to her shoulders with a deep purple scarf woven through the strands that matched a dress of gleaming silver and rich plum. It was a striking portrait, but she seemed unbothered by the finery and merely smiled at them all. “I’m sorry for entering unannounced. There’s no door to knock on.”

“Not at all, my lady,” said Qui-Gon at once, bowing.

She smiled again, and stepped fully in to the airy healing room, one hand placed over her abdomen, which was huge with child. Tahl was unfazed, and Qui-Gon was emitting waves of delight at the sign of another growing life, but Feemor couldn’t decide quite what to do or where to look and settled on keeping his gaze firmly on the woman’s smiling face. Qui-Gon shot him an amused glance.

“My lady, these are my compatriots, Jedi Knight Tahl Uvain, and my apprentice, Padawan Feemor Ar’Gall,” said the tall Jedi, gesturing to them. “Tahl, Feemor, this is Lady Alaea Antilles of Alderaan, wife to Senator Vill Antilles.”

Feemor sat up higher in his bed and focused on trying to switch from teasing his Master to using more formal language. “Good morning, my lady. I understand I have you to thank for the gardens, and for our transportation home.”

Lady Antilles nodded. “It was my pleasure to help. I’m sorry for the troubles you had on Hoth, but I’m glad to see you nearly well. How are you feeling?”

“Very well. I believe the confinement to the bed is mostly erring on the side of caution.”

“Always wise,” said she. “I hope none of you were offended by our—well, our pushiness about your travels home,” she said frankly, causing Tahl to grin. “Queen Ekay can’t be here herself at the moment, but she wanted you to know that it was a gesture of thanks for the Order’s faithful service, and nothing more than Naboo hospitality.”

Qui-Gon’s eyes twinkled. “We were not offended. Although I’ve never been so _thoroughly_ quashed in my protests since I was a Padawan.”

“Perhaps you needed it,” said the Lady and Tahl in perfect unison.

Qui-Gon looked briefly shocked; Feemor actually laughed.

“Lady Antilles, please sit?” Tahl asked quietly. “I sense—discomfort.”

The Aldreaanian woman looked briefly frustrated and embarrassed before she nodded and carefully took a seat on one of the empty medical beds, letting her feet dangle just above the floor. She massaged her stomach with one hand and gave them all a weary, slightly flustered smile. “Sorry. I’m going to throw most of decorum out the window.”

“There’s no need to apologize. I think you deserve a break more than I do,” Feemor pointed out, and her smile turned into a full-out grin.

“Probably. I’m nearing my time. Only a few weeks left, I’m told; Vill is desperate to be back on Alderaan in time for the birth, so we’re leaving the day after tomorrow.” She glanced down at the curve of her stomach. “I don’t mind. He or she has been fussy for a few days now and I’m quite thoroughly nauseous.”

“May I?” asked Tahl, holding out a hand.

Alaea nodded. “By all means.”

Tahl leaned over and gently place the palm of her hand over where the baby lay; her hand curved with Alaea’s stomach and she closed her eyes, sinking into the Force, emanating gentle waves of greetings-calm-happy-soothing-gentle-sleep-safety.

Alaea’s eyes widened as she felt the change. “…They’re calm.”

Tahl smiled. “And should remain so for a while. I didn’t command or influence them, merely reassured them. Your baby is excited to see you.”

The Lady rubbed her abdomen quietly, almost out of habit, and looked immensely relieved. “Thank the stars. And thank you.”

Tahl Uvain dipped her head. “It was my honor.”

“My lady, Masters Jedi?” a Naboo medic stood in the doorway, head tilted downwards in a polite show of deference. “The Jedi’s transport is ready.”

“Well,” said Lady Antilles, rising again to her feet and resuming all the airs of a trained diplomat and noble, but her eyes still sparkling familiarly, “allow me to escort you to your ship.”

Qui-Gon stepped forward and proffered his arm to her; she slipped one of her own through his and he led the small party up and out of the Theed medical center, carefully and subtly using the Force to lift the pregnant noblewoman ever so slightly off the ground so that her steps were light as feathers. She darted a glance at him that was first surprised and then simply amused, and he pressed a finger to his lips.

They parted ways at the ramp of a gleaming silver cruiser, all sleek lines and gentle curves, vaguely in the shape of a darting bird. It was by far the prettiest and loveliest ship Feemor had ever had the good fortune to enter. He paused at the top of the ramp to give Lady Antilles a final bow; she smiled and dipped her head in return.

Feemor rolled his shoulders and relaxed as the ship took off with Tahl in the pilot’s seat, looking a little gleeful at the shining display before her.

“Feeling well, Feemor?” Qui-Gon asked, pulling his apprentice into a one-armed hug.

“Yes, thanks to both of you and the Naboo,” he answered, taking a moment to indulge in the affection—somewhere between father and brother. He turned silver-blue eyes out the viewport to watch the shining blue-green planet recede, in all of its natural, peaceful glory. “Do you think we’ll ever be back?”

“Oh,” said Qui-Gon thoughtfully. “I suspect we’ll see Naboo again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *A standard galactic week is five days. When Qui-Gon says that the shuttle would take a two week return trip he means ten days, so the difference between the shuttle‘s speed and the cruiser’s is about three days.
> 
> Alleluia, I am going on vacation! Thank goodness for a mercy after so many months of quarantine. I am hoping to keep writing as usual, but it may be up to two weeks before you get an update. Hopefully not, but maybe.


	5. The Centennial Celebration

Feemor exited the High Council chambers alone and found Qui-Gon waiting for him, leaning against one of the gleaming pillars that lined the wide hallway leading to the circular chamber, each section between the pillars alternating between crystal-clear windows gazing down on Coruscant from the Temple’s highest point, and walls of white granite carved centuries upon centuries ago, the artwork and words of ancient Jedi perfectly preserved.

The ever-changing modern and the old traditions side by side, as a reminder to every Jedi who walked this corridor.

Qui-Gon Jinn was gazing out one of the windows, his figure illuminated by the pale gold-grey of pre-dawn light just beginning to break through the urban horizon. Rapidly approaching thirty, he was somehow taller and more broad-shouldered than ever, but his loose-hanging hair and robes and wide grin did a lot to undermine his imposing stature as he turned to greet his Padawan.

“Well?” he asked.

Feemor smiled quietly. “Thank you, Master.”

Qui-Gon cocked his head to the side. “I didn’t do anything, Feemor, except the obvious. It’s what you deserve.”

“Still.” The blonde walked over to join the elder man at the window, leaning against the next pillar so they were facing each other. “You recommended me for my Trials, Master. I’ve not done very much to earn that, but I know you meant it, so—thank you. For whatever it is you see in me.”

His Master looked surprised. “Haven’t done very much? Feemor Ar’Gall, don’t be stupid. You’re rapidly approaching mastery of your chosen saberform; you’ve been on diplomatic missions more complicated than almost all your peers—that part is my fault, by the way, but you’ve done very well there; you already know what your career path will be and you’ve methodically studied for it since you were first apprenticed.”

He inhaled deeply and turned his gaze back to the skyline for a moment.

Feemor gave him time.

“…You survived the loss of Master Ko with such dignity. I have always admired that, I still admire it. You possess a level of compassion _and_ a level of _control_ I certainly don’t. You’re more than ready for Knighthood.”

Feemor did not blush, but his eyes crinkled up with affection and he took a step closer to his Master and pulled the other Jedi, taller than him by several inches, in to a brief hug. “Then—my answer is the same. Thank you, Master.”

Qui-Gon grinned widely. “I don’t know what for. I’m surprised you ever forgave me for the leaves-in-the-laundry incident. Or Hoth.”

“Oh, I _never_ forgave you for the leaves-in-the-laundry,” said Feemor glibly. “And Hoth was a mutual disaster. It was also almost a year ago.”

“So there’s a chance the grudge could flourish, you mean.”

“Well, if you keep nagging about it, sure.”

“Brat.” Qui-Gon reached over and tugged rudely on the Padawan braid, a gesture they both realized would probably be impossible very soon. “…Did they tell you when?”

“After my next solo mission,” Feemor said easily. “I ship out tomorrow morning at the sixth hour.”

“Really?” Qui-Gon’s face remained mildly interested, but something in his chest twanged with foreboding, a sudden strike of personal fear that was rare for him. He quashed it ruthlessly. It was not his way to hold people he loved back by being possessive and fretful. “Where are they sending you?”

Feemor’s smile brightened. “Alderaan. Purely diplomatic mission, representing the Order at the centennial anniversary of the Galactic Reformation.” He stood up, stepping away from the window, and waited for his Master to join him before setting out to return to their shared Master-Padawan quarters. “I’ve been requested specifically by the Senator from Alderaan. I’m to stay with them—in the Senatorial house, not their personal home, of course. They’ll be there while I am though.”

“Senator Antilles and Lady Antilles?” Qui-Gon recalled. “That’s wonderful! And their child?”

Feemor smiled. “A girl. I’m told they named her Breha.”

* * *

Qui-Gon emerged from his rooms shortly after the eighth hour, looking serene but exuding the faintest tremor of worry into the Force surrounding him.

A youngling or Padawan would not have noticed. A Knight may not have noticed.

The two Councilors approaching him down the hallway certainly did.

The shorter of the two by far ambled directly up to Qui-Gon and poked him _hard_ in the shins with the small stick held in his small, clawed hands.

Qui-Gon narrowly avoided yelping like a child in public and instead hissed through his teeth and sent his Grandmaster a look that could arguably be labeled a pout. “Master Yoda!”

“Deserved it, you did,” Yoda said glibly. “ _Brooding_ , you were. Bad for your health it is, give you permanent wrinkles it will. Look like me, do you wish?”

The other Councilor was a striking, robust human male just barely shorter than Jinn himself, and even broader in the shoulders. He had dark brown hair with two narrow stripes shaved down either side of his head going from above his eyebrows all the way to the nape of his neck, dark green eyes, and a permanent slight smirk. He laughed outright at Qui-Gon and reached over to jab the brooding Knight’s shoulder with one large fist. “Brooding, eh? I’m surprised you didn’t go see the lad off in person.”

Qui-Gon’s lips turned down threateningly. “I didn’t need to. I saw him off on his first solo, and I’ll see him off on his first mission as a Knight.” His voice was determinedly level.

The powerfully built Councilor wasn’t deceived. “Sure, sure. And you’ll mope around then as much as you are now? Come on, Jinn.”

“Micah,” he growled back, dodging another whack to the arm. “Lay off.”

“ _No_ ,” said Micah and Yoda simultaneously.

They both whacked him at the same time; Micah on the arm and Yoda again on the shin using the stick.

Qui-Gon couldn’t help a small yelp this time. He glowered at both of them.

“Micah Giiett—” he snapped, swatting back at the other man, who dodged just in time. “—what, exactly, do you want?”

“Visit a friend, can we not?” Yoda queried. “Tease him from his brooding, hmm.”

“I was not brooding!”

“You’re brooding right now,” observed Micah. “Your whole _face_ is a thundercloud. It's not attractive. Your Force presence is worse."

“That was after you showed up and started hitting me!”

“No,” said Yoda. “Before, it definitely was.”

“I am perfectly fine!”

“You’re perfectly furious,” laughed Micah, folding his arms. “Come along, Jinn, we’re going to spar.” He grabbed the younger Jedi by the elbow and hauled him bodily down the hallway, despite Qui-Gon’s considerable efforts to get away.

“I—I was going to meditate, I don’t want to spar—”

“Yes you do.”

“Let go, Micah, I don’t want to spar with you—”

“How about this,” Giiett said as they vanished around the next corner, “if you spar with me until the end of the hour, I won’t tell Tahl about any of this, and she won’t beat your ass on the salles herself. Fair?”

Qui-Gon shut up at once.

Yoda chuckled all the way to the gardens, humming to himself and waving at a toddling crecheling that beamed at him as he passed, completely oblivious to the rank and legacy of the little green Jedi, only admiring his friendly face and glowing, wispy Force presence.

* * *

Feemor descended the ramp and found himself under a threatening cloud cover that was promising a torrential thunderstorm in the very near future. The aide who had been sent to escort him offered him a wry apology and reached out to carry his luggage, which Feemor allowed a little reluctantly. Like most Jedi, he was uncomfortable being _waited on_ in any form, but he respected other cultures—particularly this one—too much to deny a perfectly content free being the pleasure of doing his job.

The young man explained to him that the storm had delayed the Antilles family on their return trip from a dinner with local authorities, one of the many ways the family insisted on interacting with the entire populace.

Alderaan had a functioning social class system, but not one that deprived any of its members of their rights—such injustice was closely monitored and illegal in the Republic. Where ancient and Outer Rim worlds had caste systems that broke the backs of the working majority to benefit the wealthy minority, Alderaanians mostly maintained a class system out of traditions older than history and out of convenience. Each class was as respected as the last, but differed in kinds of wealth and in size of population. A member of the largest class, the agricultural public, was equally capable of shifting “upwards” to the governing class as they did of staying where they were. Each class looked out for the lives and provisions of the others, and had laws in place to make sure their rights were defended.

Old families still had powerful, traditional footholds in each class. The Monezurri bloodline had been the proud owners and operators of a galaxy-renowned winery for time out of mind; the Organa family had been a governance family in the Western region for almost as long; the Wilsera clan had been farming an apple orchard for the same period of time; the Antilles had been the royal family for the past three centuries. A vote could depose them, but they were well-beloved by their people.

Vill was cousin to Bail Antilles, the current Prince of Alderaan.

And Bail Antilles had no children and could not produce them, which made the infant daughter of Vill and Alaea the heir to the crown of Alderaan.

Feemor was here to live, dine, and commune with the royal family of one of the most respected and wealthiest planets in the Republic.

No stress there.

To be fair, they truly did manage to project such a welcoming, friendly aura that it was a little hard to remember who, exactly, he was dealing with.

When they arrived back to the Senatorial estate—the city home that was passed along from one elected Senator to the next—the downpour was raging outside accompanied by thunder so loud it made Feemor’s teeth rattle in his skull, and Vill held open the door to allow his wife to rush inside first, cradling a blanketed bundle in her arms.

The same aide was running behind them, shaking his head and trying not to laugh at their refusal to accept umbrellas or any other form of help. Vill grinned at their Jedi visitor and offered his hand for a firm shake, which Feemor did. “Welcome, Master Jedi,” he said warmly. “I apologize for not being here to greet you an hour ago; the weather has been unpredictable lately.”

“No apologies necessary,” the Jedi replied, “but since I am sure you’re going to protest, I forgive you.”

Vill laughed. He was tall, around Feemor’s height, with skin fairer than his wife’s but with striking ebony hair and a short beard that did not hide his wide, almost goofy smiles. He guided his guest deeper into the house, following the trail of rainwater Lady Antilles had left in her wake as she went to change herself and the child into warm, dry clothes.

The conversation evolved slowly from polite greetings and literal talk about the weather into discussing the politics of Western Alderaan and the upcoming Senate shuffle.

When Lady Antilles returned, dressed in a much simpler, pale lavender dress and carrying a sleeping baby, the two men were seated in comfortable chairs, drinking Alderaanian red and debating the growing power of the Trade Federation as the trading guilds waned and the Republic leaned more heavily on the Banking Clans.

Alaea _tsked_ in disgust at the work talk and promptly dropped her baby in Feemor’s arms.

Well, she settled the infant girl in his lap with supreme gentleness.

But it was so sudden and unexpected that in his mind it was as if a bolt of lightning had simultaneously swept the glass of wine from his hands and deposited a warm, sleepy bundle of baby girl into his unprepared hands.

He blinked down at her.

She blinked back, all large dark eyes and pale olive skin, wisps of mahogany curls and chubby cheeks. Only two months shy of a standard year old, Breha Antilles was all curiosity and wandering little hands and feet. She reached up in vain for his gleaming blonde locks—a rarity on her home planet.

“Umm…” he said intelligently.

He looked up at the proud parents, but they were talking serenely and pointedly ignoring his plight.

He returned his gaze to the child, who was screwing up her face in frustration at the distance between her little hand and the golden hair she was seeking. After a moment, he hesitantly leaned his head closer to her, and gently caught her little paw with his hand and guided it to his hair.

She rubbed at the pale strands with excitement, cooing.

Then she dug in her tiny fingers and yanked.

“OW!”

* * *

The festivities began at dawn, and fortunately for the House Antilles and their guest, all of them except the baby were used to rising early. When Feemor descended from his temporary rooms after meditation he found Vill already at the table, sipping caramel caff and perusing a datapad, bathed in the strange glimmer of pre-morning light. He waved at the Jedi to take a seat.

“Good morning, Padawan Ar’Gall,” he said. “A light breakfast is on its way; can I offer you caff, tea, water?”

“Please, call me Feemor,” the younger man insisted. “Caff would be appreciated.” Senator Antilles passed him a tray with a large ceramic pot of caff, several empty cups, and an assortment of mix-ins from sugars to spices to creams, a few of which Feemor did not recognize. He deftly poured himself a cup of the dark liquid, stirring in a little sweetener and honey just for the fun of it. He curled his hands around the warm ceramic and sipped slowly, giving an appreciative hum.

“Oh, _thank you_ ,” the Knight-Elect sighed blissfully. “I hardly ever get my hands on caff.”

“Really?” Antilles looked surprised. “Why not?”

“Well, for one, the caff in the commissary is fairly dreadful, especially because they avoid the actual caffeine. So many of our Order are non or near-human, and have varying responses to high doses of caffeine,” the blonde explained. “Normally I’d have caff in the quarters I share with my Master, but unfortunately, Qui-Gon Jinn is a tea addict, a tea expert, and he despises caff. Won’t allow any to be brewed in his home.”

Vill’s jaw dropped. “He won’t let you make any caff? Ever?”

Feemor chuckled. “On occasion. Three times, I think. Once, when I was sick, towards the beginning of my apprenticeship with him. Another when I was on the verge of breakdown studying for my threshold exams. And the third time, every day for a whole week after we returned from Hoth.”

“Well, he makes you work for your caff.”

“Almost made the Hoth disaster worth it,” Feemor admitted, dreamily sipping his caff. “Damn, this is really, really good.”

“You’ll have full access whenever you’re in residence this week, I swear,” Vill said with dramatic solemnity.

“As long as there’s some for me, move over,” added Alaea, inserting herself into a chair and pouring herself a mug to the brim and taking it black. “ _Fuck_. Imagine living without caff.”

Feemor choked on his beverage.

* * *

“So,” said Tahl. “I hear you got your ass handed to you by Micah, and neither of you thought to invite me. Or Plo Koon. My feelings are hurt. Plo is devastated.”

“Go away,” groused Qui-Gon Jinn, who was very much _not_ behaving like a Jedi Knight with a nearly-Knighted apprentice, and was instead sitting on a cushioned chair in his quarters and idly levitating all the spoons from the kitchen around his head.

“I can’t believe you would think that it’s okay for you to not let me see you get slaughtered on the dueling floor,” Tahl continued, standing beside him and beginning to pluck the rotating utensils out of the air with ease.

Every time she caught one, he scowled a little less, his lips beginning to twitch into a reluctant smile.

“I mean, I haven’t been able to beat you more than once out of every three or four duels since we were made Senior Padawans. That’s not something I admit lightly, mind you, but you’re built like a kriffing _tree_ and you just jump all around like a bouncing bean with a lightsaber—”

“Rude,” he interjected, but he was almost smiling for real now.

“—and it’s difficult to stop a tree with a sword, so it’s always a pleasure to watch it happen—”

“Tahl—”

“And it is _not_ a pleasure to watch you mope about your Knight-Elect, who is perfectly capable of handling a diplomatic event, and who would not be happy to see you being a grouch!”

Pause.

Slowly, Qui-Gon released his Force-grip on the flying spoons, letting them settle gently to the tabletop. Tahl placed the ones she had collected next to them and sat herself down on a cushion cross-legged, waiting for him to speak.

“I know that I’m being ridiculous,” Qui-Gon admitted.

“A first,” chirped Tahl.

He shot her a warning look that only made her smirk.

“But I wonder if I took an apprentice too soon, and one that was too old. Feemor is…he’s more than capable, he’s brave and level-headed and he’s quick to find solutions to things, but he’s…he’s almost stagnant, sometimes. I wonder if I coddled him too much, or maybe pushed him too hard, and now he’s going to want to stay at the Temple and wander around like an Elder.”

Tahl’s face fell as he spoke, her emerald-gold eyes darkening, but she held her tongue.

“I have no doubt that Feemor can and will be an excellent Jedi Knight. But he…I feel like I went wrong, somewhere, especially after Hoth. Did I keep him too close after that? Or was the issue me letting him strike out alone in a forcedamn blizzard when we all know he’s susceptible to cold?”

“You are such an _idiot_ ,” said Tahl bluntly.

Qui-Gon drew up short. “… _What?_ ”

“You. An idiot, you are,” she said, mimicking Yoda’s manner of speech. She leaned forward over her legs to peer up at him, multi-colored eyes glimmering. “You’re overthinking things. A year ago, two years ago, even a few months ago you wouldn’t have thought any of these things. Maybe they’ve occurred to you before when you’re at your weakest or most tired, or when your bond with Feemor has been at its worst, but you know these thoughts are stupid, Qui-Gon Jinn. Feemor isn’t weak, or poorly-trained, or stagnant. He’s just not built to follow in your footsteps. Feemor may not be a grand adventurer or a maverick like you, but he’s no less a Jedi. He’s _always_ been more bookish, more quiet, and that has nothing to do with you or any failures on your part. You’re not afraid of his training being flawed, you’re afraid of it being _over_.”

And with that, she sat back and waited for him to process.

It took him a few minutes.

He rubbed his beard quietly and yanked almost unconsciously on one of his long, light-mahogany locks. Tahl would have stopped the unthinking habit, but she didn’t want to interrupt his line of thought.

Finally, he answered her. “You’re right.”

“Damn right I am,” she said automatically. Then she caught up with her mouth and grinned a little bashfully and said, “I mean, yes, I’m right. And I’m glad you think so too.”

“Can you _imagine_ what I would’ve done if I’d still been thinking like that when he came home next week?” Qui-Gon said, agitated now. “Even subconsciously. If that had been—if I—he would have been able to tell. He’s always able to tell. And how would that have helped him, being Knighted knowing I didn’t support it? Even though I recommended him? _Sith_.”

He looked on the verge of whacking himself in the head and so Tahl quickly stood up and tugged the tall Jedi to his feet, growling a little under her breath when he resisted. When he was standing, she kept hold of his hands, waiting until it began to dawn on him that she was deliberately holding hands with him, their fingers intertwined, before she spoke again.

“It’s all right to struggle with attachment, Qui. We all do it when it comes time to let go. And it’s okay to need someone to remind you to keep to the path. The Jedi are a community, an Order, for a reason. We have one another’s backs. Just as I have always had yours, and you mine.”

She stood up on the tips of her boots and withdrew one of her hands from his to press it lightly against his face. They were almost nose to nose now, a mere breath away.

Then his oldest friend smiled and released him, and before Qui-Gon knew it she was walking out the door with a cheerful smile and a wave of the hand.

Utterly stunned by the past ten minutes, the Jedi sat back down, this time on the floor to meditate, surrounded by the abandoned silverware and his right cheek still burning.

* * *

It was barely mid-day, and it felt like it had been several days since Lady Antilles had made a Jedi cough on his caff with a single, cheery curse word.

The Reformation Celebrations were a three-day series of organized parades, colorful markets, speeches, and dances hosted by the government of one of the Core Worlds, with representatives from as many Republic planets present as possible. Citizens also hosted their own jamborees and drilled on dances and student recitations for months in advance; across the entire Republic, people would be celebrating on the second day of the festival, the true anniversary of the Galactic Treaty, the end of the Sith Wars—the almighty conflict between the Sith Empire, the Old Republic, and the Sith and Jedi Orders. Only the host planet celebrated the entire three days.

Feemor was in for another two and a half days of ingratiating politics mingled with genuine revelry, followed by another few days of boring council meetings with the representatives.

 _Force_ , but he was tired.

Qui-Gon was really the expert at diplomacy. Feemor was an excellent student, but honestly, sometimes he just wanted a headache treatment and a cup of forcedamn caff.

He mingled with the politicians, danced with other representatives and their spouses and children, listened to half a dozen speeches and a ballad, carried two laughing children on his shoulders to see a parade, and charmed a cantankerous citizen or two (or ten. Okay. It was three.)

All of that with his _serene_ smile on his face.

To be fair, some of it really _was_ pleasant. The children he was able to briefly befriend, the genuinely good-hearted politicians he met, the artistry the people poured into their work, the thriving community and their gracious welcome to all, it was all beautiful to behold. He strolled calmly up a sidewalk, passing by a road filled entirely with dozens of dancing civilians and visitors, swirling about in a complex pattern made up of rotating circles of dancers. Colored fabric spun around the Jedi almost dizzyingly. He paused to lift a youngling on to his shoulders to help him spot his mother amongst the dancing crowds; the child clapped and cheered every time he spotted her. A councilor from a Core world stepped up beside him and engaged Feemor in polite conversation, forcing him to multitask for a bit.

When the song ended, he set the youngling down to rush to the woman’s side, and that’s when he sensed _trouble_.

Vill and a security officer appeared at his side, discreetly tapping his arm.

“Sir Jedi,” murmured the officer. “We have a situation. We’d appreciate your assistance, if you’re willing.”

Feemor bowed to the councilor he had been talking to and followed the two men off to a side street, just around the corner from the heart of the festivities but much more silent.

“Tell me.”

“One of the representatives has been tagged with a bounty,” the officer said grimly. “A large one.”

“Large enough to tempt an attack here, during the festival,” Feemor concluded.

“Yes,” affirmed Vill. “It’s very likely. And security at these things, it’s always difficult. Even a woman as prominent as Senator Fornouta is vulnerable.”

“The Senator from Naboo,” Feemor said quietly, recalling his brief introduction to the woman, one of the people who had assisted his Master after Hoth and had procured them such a luxurious ride home. “Oh dear.”

“She’s here with one of Naboo’s democratic Councilors; they’re both concerned more for the safety of the others than themselves. They want to leave without causing a panic, but there’s no guarantee of their safety or anyone else’s no matter where they go,” Senator Antilles continued, rubbing his forehead. “Captain Matonian thinks it would be safest to have them guarded by our security teams, and if possible, you.”

Feemor nodded. “You have my help, absolutely. Where is the Senator now?”

The security officer, Matonian, nodded shortly. Some of the lines of stress in his face seemed to ease a little at the Jedi’s easy assistance. “She’s inside the palace with a few others, organizing another conference for the docket. There’s the Councilman, the representative from Dantooine, two from Rodia, the _Mand’alor_ and his wife, and six of my men. There are others posted at their regular stations nearby.”

“The _Mand’alor_ ,” Feemor said, quietly. “Well. Not to demean your men, Alderaan, but that’s as good as a dozen men right there.”

Captain Matonian arched a dubious eyebrow but said nothing.

The rumors that swirled around the Mandalorian Systems were intimidating even if one only took them half seriously.

The three men hurried into the palace through a casually concealed side door and wound their way to one of the main sitting rooms, a large, airy space with high arching ceilings in typical Alderaanian style and filled out with a thick navy carpet and sturdy, elegant furniture. Seated in these chairs and standing around the room were the seven representatives, and four of the six officers were stationed within view.

All eleven turned their heads at the opening of the door.

Senator Fornouta, a petite woman with elaborately curled hair the color of caramel, rose to her feet at once, her expression serene. “Master Jedi,” she said, looking at Feemor. “Thank you most sincerely for your help. I’m sorry that this is interrupting your scheduled mission, whatever that may be.”

“I am here to serve, Senator,” he replied with a respectful bow. “I take it—since you’re talking about it fairly openly—that everyone in the room knows about the situation?”

Everyone nodded.

“In that case, I recommend that we make it appear as if I’ve left,” Feemor stated. “Any bounty hunter worth their salt will know there is a Jedi here and be on the watch for them; if we can make it plausible that I have gone, I can go undercover and move unseen around the Senator.”

“Could we not just spread the rumor that you’ve been summoned away, back to your Council, or sent on a new assignment?” asked one of the Rodian representatives. “And hide your ship?”

“No,” Captain Mantonian said shortly. “For a Jedi to leave such a prominent event—the only Jedi currently here, to boot—it’s going to take more than a flimsy cover story.”

The man farthest away from Feemor shifted a little, glancing at the woman standing by his side. She gave him a minute nod and then stepped forward several paces, extending a gloved hand. “Master Jedi,” he said calmly. “I may be able to help with that.”

“ _Man’dalor_ ,” Feemor said, respectfully, shaking the mans hand with a firm grip. He could feel the strength of the other man in that brief handshake; even without the bulk of his armor, it was obvious that the current warrior-king of Mandalore was built like a mech-tank, undoubtedly from his years as a farmer, solider, and king. The armor he was currently wearing was light—a chest plate, a light mesh armor covering his back, a buckler, and shin guards—and tinted a subtle shade of blue. His cloth and leather clothing were all deep brown.

Feemor was unfamiliar with the complexities of Mandalorian culture and the meanings of all the colors they used, but he understood at a glance that he was looking at a tired, hardworking man. This impression was only heightened by his tanned and weathered face, the smile lines around his lips and the frown lines around his eyes and on his forehead, and the calculating glitter in his brown eyes.

They assessed one another for the span of a few seconds and then released hands.

“My official title is Knight-Elect Feemor Ar’Gall,” the blonde said after a moment. “But feel free to address me as Feemor, or Padawan Ar’Gall, or simply Jedi if it suits you.” The last one he said with a faint smile that the ruler of Mandalore echoed slyly.

“As you wish, _Jedi_ ,” answered the _Man’dalor_. “Now. About that cover story. How do you feel about freefalling from a ship as it enters the atmosphere?”

Feemor grinned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for my extended absence! I went on a two-week trip, came home, and immediately got sick (not COVID, just your average stomach bug.) I'm back at it now, but I fell behind in my writing so updates may still be iffy for a bit. I promise to at least leave you a new update before September 12th, when I leave town once again. Hope all of you are well!


	6. Centennial Conflictions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha, whoops, I'm back again a little over a day later! What can I say, I had a day off and the fic was calling me.

Feemor plummeted through thin air, watching the great sea of Alderaan rising up to meet him.

The deep blue-green rose up to meet him so quickly; it was swallowing up his vision before he could really process it.

 _Live in the moment_ , a voice that sounded _damnably_ like Qui-Gon’s reminded him.

“Yeah, I know,” murmured the young Knight-Elect, his voice torn away by the wind. “Living in the moment, Master.” He leaned into the Force, using it to control his fall. Far above him now he could sense the retreating ship that was exiting the planet’s atmosphere, the door he had just leapt out of already closed.

Inside, he knew, the _Mand’alor’s_ wife was seated alone and perfectly at her ease.

The cover story had been simple, but thorough. The Lady of Mandalore, Akacya, was not a mere figurehead; she was a diplomat, a warrior, and—most key in this instance—she was the _Alor’aan_ of the Jedi Temple on the Mandalorian world of Concord Dawn.

Claiming a dispute between herself and the Master of the Temple, she demanded that Feemor accompany her home as a mediator from the Coruscant Temple, and he accepted, making verbal apologies to many of the high-ranking politicians on Alderaan, including a regretful farewell to Senator Antilles. Ten minutes later, Feemor and the _Alor’aan_ were onboard the Mandalorian cruiser heading off-planet, and minutes later Feemor had leapt from the open door, concealed from view from the main city behind the mountain range they had ascended past.

Lady Akacya would return to Concord Dawn and attend to whatever business she chose, completely free of the false “dispute,” and Feemor—

\--landed neatly in the water with a minimal splash, swapping out regulated breathing for an A72 Aqua Breather. He swam with Force-enhanced speed to the nearest shoreline, where he found the speeder Vill had promised him waiting along with Captain Matonian.

“Sir Jedi,” the man said shortly. “We’re on a tight schedule.”

“Believe me,” said Feemor, leaping on to the speeder and engaging it, “I know.”

As they hurtled across the countryside surrounding the capital city, keeping low to avoid being spotted, Feemor fished the ear-comm out of the compartment and inserted it. A low dial tone buzzed for a moment, and then someone spoke.

“Jedi.”

“ _Mand’alor_.”

“So far, we’re in the clear. The Senator is with me and the Alderaanian squad, currently missing a round of speeches to keep cover. She’s not happy.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Feemor replied, not bothering to ask if the Mandalorian was capable of holding things down until then. He obviously was. “Any updates on hostiles?”

“All new arrivals have been discretely screened, even more thoroughly than prior arrivals. So far no red flags. Alderaan has been re-checking the priors, prioritizing ones that aren’t attached to their home governments, random citizens, so forth.”

“All right. Comm me if something happens.”

“’ _Lek_.” And with that curt affirmative, the Mand’alor got off the comm.

* * *

Qui-Gon had been searching for Tahl most of the afternoon, but it seemed she was avoiding him.

She had left his apartments after that emotionally-heightened conversation just over four hours ago, and he had been searching for two.

Did she regret what she had said, or was she perhaps angry with him for his brief breakdown over Feemor’s strengths?

Or maybe she regretted something she had done?

He tried not to think of her slim brown hands pressed willingly in his.

They had indulged in many affectionate touches when they were younger—they and Micah Giiett and Clee Rhara—hugs, pats on the hand and shoulder, hands ruffling one another’s hair, even falling asleep piled up together after a long day.

But as they grew older…Micah was still fond of bone-crushing hugs and punches on the arm (Qui-Gon’s arm still ached from this morning), and Clee was fond of one-armed hugs and unexpected yanks on other people’s hair when they annoyed her, but while Qui-Gon and Tahl were both affectionate with their other friends and with Feemor, they had slowly pulled away from one another.

Like it was taboo, to touch.

Maybe it was.

“Knight Qui-Gon!” a voice chirped.

Startled from his swirling thoughts, the towering young Jedi looked down at a skinny youngling, all pale tunics and huge midnight eyes and a mop of shiny raven hair.

Qui-Gon smiled. “Good morning, Initiate DuCrion.”

Xanatos beamed.

* * *

Feemor adjusted his helmet and fought not to sigh.

Formal robes for the Centennial were bad enough—stiffer than his preferred tunics and heavier—but a full wardrobe change into reinforced leather and plate armor? _I may suffocate before I catch this bounty hunter,_ he reflected woefully. _But if I die because I didn’t like my fashion statement, Qui-Gon will follow me_ laughing _into the Great Force when he dies._

“Hanging in there, _jetii_?” a Mandalorian accent murmured in his earcomm.

“Well, it’s a little hard to breathe, a little hard to move,” said Feemor. “But trust me, I have faced worse.”

“I’m sure you have,” he said, and it was hard to tell whether that was genuine respect in his voice or not. “I don’t wear any armor but _beskar_ , it’s all too heavy, and not even durable enough to make up for it.”

“I’ve never cared for armor. But right now I admit jealousy.”

“Well focus on the bounty and we can get that common metal off you,” the _Mand’alor_ said with a hard chuckle.

“I’m focused. My senses are telling me that there are no hostiles currently nearby, but that could change at any moment. And it’s not foolproof.”

There was an unrestrained scoff on the other end.

Ar’Gall ignored it.

“The Senator has agreed to cooperate. We have a good shot at protecting both her and the civilians.”

“And yet any bounty hunter who is willing to target a popular Senator in the middle of one of the galaxy’s biggest celebrations knows full well the risks,” the older man said sharply. “Anyone fool enough to take this job is going to either have done this before, or done fuck-all before and is trying to make a name for themselves.”

“Let’s hope we get one of each and they shoot each other.”

The warrior-king mumbled something that definitely included “ _dinii_ ,” which even Feemor recognized as an insult that translated roughly to “insane.”

Whether he was talking about the bounty hunters or Feemor, well, Feemor decided not to ponder.

A hand suddenly closed around the Jedi’s arm above the elbow. Feemor didn’t startle, too well-trained and aware of his surroundings—but he still had not been expecting the grab. He turned his head and found the Councilman from Naboo, Senator Fornouta’s companion to the festivities.

“Sir,” Feemor asked quietly, his eyes on the young Naboo man and his senses on his surroundings, probing the Living Force.

“Sergeant,” the Councilman said, using the false rank they had given him along with the Alderaanian disguise. “I don’t wish to distract you—I’ll be brief—but I have suspicions that…that my Senator is not…willing to consider.”

A ripple in the Force told Feemor to pay attention.

“What suspicions?”

“…I…” the young man struggled, his nerves clearly at war with his public service training; his hands were twitching anxiously, but he kept his spine resolutely straight and his face relatively smooth, and tucked his shaking hands into his billowing sleeves. “I think someone on Naboo is the one who put the bounty out on our Senator. I believe we have a traitor.”

 _Kriff_.

* * *

Yan Dooku strode through the halls of the Temple, cloak billowing behind him. To the unfamiliar eye he would look cross, but anyone who knew the mysterious, oft-away Jedi Master would be able to tell that he was simply deep in thought.

He blew past groups of Padawans and clusters of conversing Knights without so much as glancing at them. A few cast him startled looks, but most just got out of his way.

Eventually he stopped outside a door, one of the many Master-Padawan quarters in a long hallway of near-identical apartments. Dooku examined the touchpad for a moment and then sighed and knocked on the doorframe.

There was a pause, and then the door swished open to reveal his overgrown titan of a former Padawan, blinking at him in some surprise but already smiling.

“Dooku,” he said cheerily. “You’re back!”

“Observant as ever,” Yan drawled, stepping into the apartment when Qui-Gon moved aside. “Yes, here in the flesh. For a good while, too, I believe.”

“Good,” said Qui-Gon.

Dooku arched a dark eyebrow. “Why, do you _worry_ about me when I’m gone?”

The Knight shot him a slightly sullen look and led him deeper into his quarters to the open seating area, boasting well-used furniture, a soft carpet with smudges of soil in its fibers, and every surface adorned with some sort of flowering green plant, not one of them alike. The blinders over the window were, as always, thrown open to allow light inside, casting the entire area in a faint warm glow.

Jinn sat down on a meditation cushion, perfectly at his ease. Dooku sat himself on a large highbacked chair, brushing his cloak out of the way.

“So, what brings you to visit me, Master?”

“Sentiment,” drawled Dooku. “And politics.”

Qui-Gon wrinkled his nose. “Mmm. Can we focus on the sentiment and forget the politics?”

“No.”

“…Oh, all right then. Fine. Spew the whole thing out; I’ll brew tea.”

The Knight rose and moved into the kitchen, which was wholly open to the seating area save for a low countertop between himself and the room where his old Master sat waiting. Qui-Gon began steeping sapir, and Yan launched directly into his lecture, never one to dawdle on pleasantries and uncertainties.

“As always, I can’t tell you quite where I’ve been travelling,” he began. “Nor can I share everything I have learned. But the rumors and the unrest in the outer territories is growing more and more intense; even the Senate will begin to rumble with it, soon. Slow moving it may be, but a slowly collapsing economy cannot be ignored.”

Dooku ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair—an uncharacteristic display of weariness that had his former Padawan biting his tongue to hold back a worried comment.

“…I can tell you that my last stop was to a Mandalorian Imperial planet,” he said quietly. “And I begin to worry that we have been overlooking things on the orders of our esteemed government. Our economy is failing. Why? Why are the trading guilds failing? Why have we begun to lean so heavily on the Banking Clans? Meanwhile, there are factions who would…see the Jedi become a peacekeeping force.”

Onyx eyes flickered to the window, to Qui-Gon, away again. “…A _militarized_ force.”

Qui-Gon swallowed thickly. The kettle began to murmur as the water inside reached boiling point. “…We aren’t exactly _demilitarized_. The Galactic Treaty did not take away all our independence,” he pointed out.

“No. But our most war-like Jedi come from our Temple on Mandalore. Almost four-thousand years ago we backed the Sith into a corner and made them an offer they could not refuse; they were fractured into two factions and it was easy enough to convince them to disband, to hand over their worst offenders to the hands of the newborn Galactic Republic.”

Qui-Gon rested a hand on the handle of the kettle, desperately wanting it to whistle.

He didn’t want to listen to this.

This was beyond his purview.

This was…this was… _what was it?_

“For over three and a half thousand years the Jedi Order has stood between the Republic and its enemies, between order and chaos, and we have kept an eye on the scattered Sith factions.”

Dooku’s eyes met Qui-Gon’s again, and this time the black fixed on the deep blue and held there, magnetic and icy.

“But our numbers have begun to dwindle, while theirs have begun to rise. Our Mandalorian Temple has gone from one of our largest factions to one of our smallest in just the past two centuries, and the Mandalorian military has begun to shrink as well. Where are these people going, Qui-Gon?”

The teakettle shrieked.

Dooku spoke softly, but Qui-Gon still heard him, frozen with one hand resting on the whistling kettle.

“Something is coming, and we may not have the numbers to meet it.”

* * *

“Who,” Feemor demanded at once. “Who do you think is the traitor?”  
  


“I don’t know,” the Councilman admitted, watery blue eyes widening. “Believe me, sir Jedi, I’ve been trying to look into it. But I’m a junior Councilman, my voice is representative of the Naboo who chose me, and my advice is to support our monarch. I don’t know who to trust, and Senator Fornouta won’t hear of any possible traitors.”

Feemor inhaled slowly, still trying to keep his senses attuned to his entire surroundings, moving his gaze from the Councilman over to the Senator, mere yards away, seated on a podium with several others, listening to a speech and awaiting her own turn at the podium. She looked perfectly serene, trusting him and the others to protect her and the innocents around them.

“Traitors,” he repeated in a whisper. “To the crown, or to the Senator, specifically?”

“I don’t know,” the man repeated, looking distressed. “I understand that I’m not giving you much to work with here, but I feel that this is all coming to a head. I’ve been noticing things for over a year now. Misplaced documents that turn up in unexpected places, random holo-calls, strange coincidences. Nothing concrete. Just…gut instincts, and a few strange events.”

Feemor understood that feeling.

As a Jedi, he was used to trying to explain—especially to Force-nulls or those untrained in the Jedi arts—that he was sensing something beyond their perception.

But this was different. A woman, a politician, her life was in his hands. If someone from her own government had been planning this, the chances of her survival dwindled down drastically.

“Can you find a plausible reason to excuse yourself from the next few events?”

The Naboo man looked faintly surprised, but recovered at once, summoning up another casual smile and nodding as if merely engaging a civilian in ordinary conversation. “Yes,” he said through that wide smile. “The only thing I absolutely cannot miss is the firelight recitation.”

The reading of the old Galactic Treaty and the lighting of candles and floating lanterns to honor the dead of the Sith Wars and every fallen Republic officer since.

Feemor gave a short nod. “All right. Find that excuse and go. I want you to start digging, indiscreetly if you must. Take the Mand’alor with you; if you’re right, whoever is behind this will notice when you start pulling up evidence and possibly divert a target onto your back. Are you prepared for that?”

“Without question,” the Councilman said immediately.

His pale blue eyes promised absolute loyalty, and Feemor felt a spark of admiration.

“Then go. If you find anything concrete, contact me immediately. I’m going to stick close to the Senator. And I’m pulling her out of the dancing this evening; we’ll fake a minor injury if we must. Moving crowds will be too much if this bounty hunter as government backing.”

“Thank you, Master Jedi,” the Councilman breathed. He stepped away, but Feemor called out after him.

“Wait—what’s your name, Councilman, sir?”

The older man smiled. “Palpatine. Lord Sheev Palpatine, at your service, Master Jedi, but my family name will do just fine.”

He held out his hand, and Feemor shook it. 

* * *

Six hours had passed since Feemor had sent Councilman Palpatine off to scrounge up evidence. He had heard nothing but periodic updates between himself and the Mand’alor on the continued safety of their respective charges in all that time.

No bounty hunters.

No bombs, no shootings, no poisoned food.

No vanished guards.

No suspicious persons, at all.

And Sheev Palpatine had yet to find anything concrete. Gaps, he said. Missing documents, but nothing noteworthy enough to spark an investigation. Call records with certain calls erased seamlessly from the registry. A nervous secretary who had been replaced as soon as she got twitchy and had seemingly vanished off the face of the planet. Nothing pointing to anyone in particular.

But Feemor had to agree, and the Force seemed to nod along with his instincts, that something was wrong here.

This bounty hunter wasn’t sent by any stranger, or Hutt clan, or wandering Sith looking to make a hit on the Republic they were forbidden to touch.

Someone much more personal was after the Senator, and Feemor would lay down his life before he let that happen.

The firelight recitation was about to begin. He was hovering discreetly a few feet behind the Senator as she stood with hundreds of others, thousands of others, surrounding the podium where King Bail Antilles currently stood, dressed in the traditional white, navy, and gold of House Antilles. He was a handsome, striking man with a sonorous voice, the kind of man who demanded attention without bullying or shouting for it.

He began to read from a copy of the Galactic Treaty, the blue glow of the holopad illuminating his face, contrasting with the white artificial lights from the surrounding buildings, and from the candles already held by hundreds of waiting hands in the gathered audience that stretched from the podium in front of the capitol palace all the way into the heart of the city.

People in their homes would be watching and listening on holo-feed; speakers lining the streets allowed the entire live audience to listen in clearly.

There was almost total, respectful silence.

Feemor struggled not to twitch when he was startled from his worried thoughts by the word “Jedi”—King Antilles was reading the section dedicated to the role of the Jedi Order in the mediations between the Republic, the broken Sith Empire, and the Mandalorian Empire. The paragraph that made the Jedi Order an official, sacred religious institution and also granted them representation in the Senate and allowed them to keep a functioning peacekeeping force—pilots, and tech specialists, and spies.

Nobody glanced his way.

To the crowd, he was just another Alderaanian guard, blending in the background.

The Force shrieked a warning.

Feemor lunged forward, vaulting over the front row of listeners and landed directly between the raised podium and Senator Fornouta. He raised both hands and pushed with the Force, the breath leaving his body as he flung a thermal detonator away from the crowds, up into the sky.

It vanished from view for a few moments.

Then it exploded with a deafening boom, almost as high as the tallest towers of the palace.

Nothing was damaged, but as fire bloomed in the heavens, the crowds began to panic.

Screams split the night; candles were dropped and people began to shove and push and run; Feemor leapt to Senator Fornouta’s side and pulled her against him despite her cry of dismay. “Stay close to me,” he shouted over the sudden commotion.

Abandoning the now-shattered pretext, he discarded his heavy helmet, sucking in fresh air gratefully.

“Where—” the Senator began.

Feemor spun around with her still pressed against him; he bent over, shielding her with his body, and in one fluid movement drew his deep blue saber and raised it behind his back, deflecting not one but three blaster bolts that would have hit his back—or, had he not spun around, the Senator’s chest.

Captain Matonian sprang out of thin air and tackled the dark form that was descending on Feemor and the Senator from Naboo.

The officer grappled with the shadowy figure, their limbs a blur of flying hands, feet, and the gleam of two blasters.

There was a loud _hisssss_ and someone wearing a jetpack landed between the Jedi and the attacker. The _Mand’alor_ had arrived, wielding dual blasters and looking exceptionally calm.

“Get her out of here,” he shouted.

“Thank you,” Feemor cried, and began to rush the Senator away, preparing to pull her into a Force-enhanced leap that would take them to the top of the nearest building. “We’re going up,” he said into her ear, quietly enough that the masked figure now fending off the wrath of both Captain Matonian and the forcedamn _Mand’alor_ himself would not hear.

The middle-aged woman looked alarmed but made no protest.

Ar’Gall tightened his grip around her waist, raised his lightsaber high, and ran forward. One stride, two, three four—he pushed off the ground hard, angling his blade away from the scattering civilians, and propelled himself and the Senator into open air.

Their feet dangled over the rapidly vanishing crowds and the small battle for a few seconds, and then they landed hard on the flat roof of a government office building. Feemor rushed forward a few more steps, getting them out of view of anyone who might have been looking from the ground, particularly their unwelcome friend with the detonators and blasters.

The Force _screamed_.

The Senator gasped.

And Feemor shoved himself bodily between his charge and the red, Sith blade that came flying out of the darkness with deadly intent.

They had walked right into a trap, and he had been wrong.

They were dealing with a rogue Sith.

 _Oh, kriff_ , he thought, blue blade crashing against red with brutal force. _I’m going to die before Qui-Gon gets to Knight me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... that was eventful.
> 
> Some of you have started asking questions about things in this universe. Timelines, planets, people. I've been dropping hints - if you look at previous chapters, you'll see it - and now I've just handed you a whole boatload of information. 
> 
> In case you're a bit overwhelmed, there's a Mandalorian Empire, a Jedi Temple on Mandalore, the Sith never went extinct but were somehow disbanded by the Galactic Treaty, the Jedi Order is much more independent of the Senate than in canon, and the Centennial Celebration is not in honor of the Ruusan Reformation, which never happened. 
> 
> Welcome to a stranger Galaxy Far, Far Away, ladies and gentlemen.  
> This is just the beginning.


	7. A Swiftly Tilting Galaxy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! Back again.  
> Warning: I told you guys from the outset that this story would eventually earn all the warning tags I pinned on it. This chapter has your first taste of some *fairly* graphic violence. I will not be tagging individual chapters from here on out. All the flags are in the tags.  
> Take them seriously.

The red blade slammed against Feemor’s deep blue one with incredible force. Whoever he was fighting, they were _strong_.

And they were quick.

No sooner had the Jedi parried than the blade was spinning away and then coming directly for this throat. Pushing the Senator to the ground, Feemor knelt in front of her, dodging the strike and stabbing his blade for his opponent’s exposed chest.

Their riposte was vicious. Feemor stood up again, defending the Senator with his body; she scrambled backwards, keeping low to avoid being shot at from anyone below the building.

The Sith slashed at Feemor’s abdomen. Feemor blocked the blow and twisted with brutal strength, forcing their wrist backwards.

There was a muffled cry of pain, but the shadowy figure did not release their saber, instead falling back on one knee, forcing Feemor to step closer to keep their blade away. As soon as he stepped in, the Sith spun, kicking the Jedi’s legs out from underneath him.

Feemor saw the red light heading directly for his head and rolled out of the way, slashing upwards again and striking nothing.

“Jedi!” The _Mand’alor_ was yelling in his ear, but there was no time and no breath to answer him.

Feemor blocked a thunderous two-handed downward strike and launched himself back to his feet, thanking Ashla for his Lineage. He was mastering Djem So to it’s fullest extent; Qui-Gon had adapted Ataru to suit his height and build; his Grandmaster, Dooku, was the master of Makashi. And every once in a blue moon, Yoda would consent to duel him.

Feemor Ar’Gall was prepared to fight opponents of any size, shape, and speed, and he was well-trained in facing an opponent with a lightsaber.

Especially in an open area.

Gathering his strength, centering himself, he launched a rapid assault; blue light flashed like indigo lightning, raining down on his opponent, who was forced into a defensive stance, retreating across the roof.

Taking his chance, Feemor screamed out: “ _Mand’alor!_ Get the Senator!”

He heard a muffled affirmative and then the sound of the jetpacks again.

“ _Osi’kyr, jetii_ ,” the king roared into the comm unit. “What the fuck, kid!”

“Sith,” Feemor yelled back. “Guard her!”

“Yeah,” he growled. In the confusing blur of flashing lightsabers and deep darkness, the Jedi caught a glimpse of the Mandalorian pressing the Senator down against the side of a raised box, perhaps a machine or a door to an attic below them, and standing guard over her in his armor, both blasters at the ready.

Feemor returned his focus to the fight.

He almost had the Darksider cornered.

Their blades crossed again and again; Feemor didn’t so much as hiss when the red saber carved a path up his forearm, burning him from wrist to elbow.

In less than a second, he did this instead: he allowed his arm to relax as if retracting it in pain, and when the Sith tried to press their advantage and push his arm aside, he summoned his saber to his other, uninjured hand with a powerful Force tug and spun it sideways and up—

The Sith _howled_.

Their lightsaber fell to the ground, still clutched in the hand of the arm that Feemor had just severed from their body.

Feemor did not stop there.

He kicked at their knees and sent them tumbling to the ground, and placed his lightsaber against their throat.

“Do you yield?” Feemor shouted.

The Sith clutched at their missing limb and said nothing.

Feemor pressed the lightsaber closer, his gut clenching horribly.

“By Galactic right and by Jedi Law, I can and will end your life here if you do not surrender,” he said in a tone of deadly calm. “Yield to me, or lose your head. I will not hesitate with civilians at risk.”

“I yield, _Jidai_ ,” the Darksider spat.

“Excellent,” said Feemor. “ _Mand’alor_ , I don’t—do you have cuffs I can use? I have a criminal to take into custody.”

“Damn. Today was the wrong day to leave the Force-inhibiting cuffs at home,” the _Mand’alor_ cursed. “But I believe the Captain may be able to assist. Regular cuffs, not inhibiting, _sadly_.”

“He’s all right then? Everyone is all right?”

“As far as I know,” shrugged the warrior-king. “Matonian beat the ever-living shit out of the first guy. I’ll call him up.”

He disappeared to the edge of the roof to update the Alderaanians on the situation, still keeping the Senator close to him just in case. She looked white but resolute, and did not complain. Feemor kept his blade steady, a breath away from decapitating his foe. He still could not see their face, masked and cowled as they were.

But he could sense the Darkness, the insane _rage_.

This was a Sith, truly; one of the rogue, murderous Sith that the Jedi were self-tasked with hunting down and bringing to justice. There were others out there, of a different kind—or so the history books said. When the Sith had disbanded all those centuries ago and handed over their most vile members to the Jedi for reckoning, some had fled. And some had issued a formal apology and gone to “seek truth” in the great unknown.

Many Jedi believed that the resolution with the Sith had been a mistake. They were insane, bent on bloodlust, determined to master the Force instead of being mastered by it.

Had the time for decisive action finally come?

* * *

Many star systems away, a figure cloaked in black lifted its head, as if scenting the air.

“Ahhh…” he sighed.

“My Lord?” a woman asked softly. “What is it?”

The dark figure, enthroned in his large chair behind an opulent desk, cast in the light of the dim red moon upon which his home stood, raised a hand in her direction and with a flick of fingers, she was engulfed in a torrent of lightning the color of blood.

She screamed and writhed.

“ _Ahh_ ,” the man said again, almost a groan. “Such _disappointment_. Not just you, base and worthless scum,” he said casually over the woman’s agonized wails. She was shuddering where she had fallen. Her skin was bursting apart as her bones hardened and calcified and then began to shatter; the blood in her veins was beginning to boil. Still he did not stop. “But him. What a waste. Still, he may yet accomplish something today. Perhaps—a little aid from the Master would not go amiss, now would it?” He retracted the lightning.

The woman could not even scream. Her jaw was broken open and blood was leaking from her eyes, her mouth, her nose and ears. Her limbs were stretched and contorted in unnatural ways.

Any moment now her heart would cease to beat. “And give me a bit of relief,” the man thought aloud. “You were ever so tedious, trash that you were.”

“But still,” he said, returning to his previous thoughts, staring idly at the mass of swirling red energy coiled in his fist, waiting to strike. “A Master ought to help his Apprentice, oughtn’t he. Just this once. Just once.”

He leaned over his desk and found a holo-transmitter.

Throwing his hood further over his face, he spoke. “Lend him a hand, at once, and I’ll double the pay going to your family,” he barked.

* * *

On Coruscant, Mace Windu fell silent mid-sentence.

The High Council room was as clean and airy as ever, filled with the light of afternoon sun, and every seat on the Council was occupied by his friends and colleagues.

But Mace clutched his skull and grit his teeth as icy cold swamped his veins and vision after vision hammered inside his head.

Glass.

 _Fractures_.

_Pain, pain, flying bits of shattered glass and magma, red blades raised high, a young boy standing alone in a dark tunnel and crying as the cold ring of metal around his throat closed tighter, a woman crying out in pain as she bore her child, white and gold flags flying triumphantly, a dark figure standing in a room filled with fresh corpses._

On and on it went, none of them connected in any meaningful way.

Something was happening.

Some Shatterpoint he had not seen growing, something he had _overlooked_ —

He dragged himself out of the swirling torrent of pain and overlapping timelines and found himself still seated on his chair as if nothing had happened. But everyone was gazing at him in alarm, and Master Yaddle had left her chair to stand before him, looking gravely concerned.

“Naboo—” Mace grit out. “No—Alderaan. Alderaan. Someone get in contact with Feemor Ar’Gall, _now_ —”

* * *

Feemor felt it just before it happened.

“Get down!” he yelled, but was drowned out as the building across the road exploded into a fiery cloud of debris. Distant screams. Flying bits of metal and stone, smoke on the air.

The Senator screamed as yet another dark figure vaulted over the side of the rooftop, running directly towards her.

The _Mand’alor_ moved to intercept—he fired once, twice—one of his blasters was removed from his grip by an excellent blaster shot. He kept shooting with the other and raised his other, gloved fist, preparing for a fight—

The Senator retreated from the scuffle.

Feemor felt something yank him _hard_.

Someone had grabbed the back of his robes with the Force and hurled him backwards; he collided with the side of the roof and felt all the wind go out of him—his ribs screamed in protest as he threw himself back to his feet with a cry of warning.

Not fast enough.

The _Mand’alor_ shot the newcomer through the head, and the Sith picked up their fallen blade, yanking it from their own severed arm, and charged at the Senator.

“ _NO!_ ” screamed two voices.

Feemor Ar’Gall and Sheev Palpatine both barreled towards Senator Fornouta, but it was too late.

The red plasma blade ran her through from her back and out through her chest. She was illuminated for a moment on both sides by red light—the fiery explosion on the one side, and the red saber behind her, her mouth open in a gurgle of shock and pain.

When the Sith withdrew the blade, her corpse fell lifeless to the rooftop to lie amongst the dust and debris, and the Darksider leveled his blade at the young, helplessly enraged Palpatine. The man had no weapon, but was carrying the cuffs Captain Matonian had promised in his shaking gloved hands.

“You monster!” Palpatine screamed. “I needed her!”

The Sith merely shrugged, and gave the Naboo Councilman a short, mocking bow.

Feemor did not hesitate this time.

With the full weight of Galactic and Jedi Law behind him and his own shame and guilt behind his blade, he struck the head of the murdering Sith from their shoulders.

Palpatine sat down next to the body of his superior, his expression hollow.

Feemor looked around.

Alderaan’s capitol was aflame, if only one building. A Galactic celebration had just been violently broken. Naboo’s government was possibly corrupt and now one of their best and brightest had been assassinated.

And a Sith had had a hand in it all.

“Ashla save us all,” Feemor murmured, disengaging his lightsaber as Vill Antilles came sprinting towards him with a contingent of soldiers and officers, his face warped with distress and smudged with smoke.

* * *

On a distant red moon, a hooded man laughed and laughed, pleased with himself and his power. He perused holo-recordings from the night’s explosive events, pausing on the images of the beheaded Darksider, the golden-haired little Jedi, the helmeted king of Mandalore, and the dead Senator, her accompanying Councilman broken with shock and grief.

“Pain is really so delicious,” he murmured to the room and the droids that were peeling the shattered corpse off his gleaming black floors. “It’s best sipped slowly, indulgently, but a swift jolt now and then truly does wonders for my mood.”

He traced a finger over the image of the dead Sith and the stunned Jedi brat once again.

“That is what he does not understand yet. Pain must be poured out slowly. The Sith will not act rashly, unless in moments of intense urgency or intense pleasure.” His voice coiled through the room like a serpent, cold, whispering, ever so slightly ridged with something that might have been boredom, or just as equally may have been insanity. “The Jedi will not be defeated in a moment’s time. I will dethrone them slowly, and when I do, I will drink of their overflowing pain for centuries.”

* * *

The rays of the early-morning sun were washing over Coruscant and all its grimy, shining metal. Ships flew back and forth in their air-lanes as they always did, a background sight by now to anyone who had visited or lived on the planet for any length of time.

To the Jedi waiting in the opened hangar, it was merely another ripple in the Force around them.

It was a struggle to keep the air around all of them from trembling; the combined weight of all their internal conflicts and fears was enough to set even a Force-null scrambling away, shying away from the strange heaviness that blanketed them.

Qui-Gon may have hesitated about sending his student off on his final solo mission, but he had no such qualms about welcoming him back.

The whole Council was waiting in the hangar along with a small unit of Healers to greet the returning Knight-Elect and what he brought with him: one live bounty hunter, one dead Sith, and Senator Vill Antilles of Alderaan as a witness from his home planet.

When Feemor descended the ramp with the bound bounty hunter in front of him and the stasis pod carrying the Darksider’s remains behind him, it was obvious to everyone that he was on the verge of meeting his limit. He looked completely drained, and his normally bright eyes were dark. Vill Antilles followed the hovering stasis pod, looking almost as careworn.

The bounty hunter was passed off to three Temple Guards for a direct escort to a holding cell. The Council eyed the stasis pod but gave Feemor soft murmurs of welcome and congratulations, however heavy they were—but did not approach him, knowing what needed to happen first.

It did.

Qui-Gon Jinn tore across the remaining space between himself and his apprentice and pulled him into a bone-crushing hug, holding him in place, warm and secure. He stayed that way until Feemor slowly, slowly, relaxed in his arms and gave a terrible sigh, resting his blonde head on his friend’s shoulder.

“Qui-Gon,” he said. “I’m so tired.”

“I know,” Qui-Gon said. “It’s all right. We all understand. You have a mandatory check-in with Vokara Che, but if you’re cleared, you have an entire half-week before the Council calls you for testimony.”

“But—”

“No buts. Everything is taken care of. More than you might think, actually.”

“What does that mean?” Feemor muttered.

Qui-Gon hesitated a moment, then maneuvered himself so that he was holding his friend and apprentice in a strong one-armed hug and began marching him slowly out of the hangar, in the direction of the Halls of Healing. “Let’s get you checked over first and rested. Tomorrow we’ll talk. We’re having a family dinner.”

A wry smile twisted the younger man’s face. “Family dinner, huh? Who will be there this time?”

“Everyone. You, me, Dooku, Zunna, Yoda, Tahl is visiting…oh, and Dooku’s new Padawan.”

Genuine interest sparked this time. Feemor’s eyes lit up a little and he looked at his Master in surprise. “Dooku’s got a _new Padawan?_ ”

“Shhh. It was meant to be a surprise.”

“You’re such a rotten spoilsport, Master,” Feemor said in exasperation. Qui-Gon squeezed his shoulders and huffed a laugh.

“I have fun at everyone else’s expenses as I see fit. It seems only fair. Everyone else is always ganging up on me.”

“You deserved it.”

Bickering lightly, they continued leisurely to the Halls, and by the time Master Che’s Padawan had him safely in an examination room, Feemor was much lighter and calmer.

Qui-Gon sank against a doorframe wearily as soon as his Padawan was out of sight, his face falling into troubled lines. The frame of the door felt cool against his skin even through his robes, and he clung to the sensation, needing something normal and bland to anchor him. It was…this past ten-day had been incomprehensible. New sister Padawans, an ominous conversation with his old Master, an affectionate one with Tahl, who had since avoided him, and then a murder and a bombing at one of the most popular events in the Galaxy. All with Feemor caught up in the middle. And Qui-Gon too, really.

 _I can’t be feeling this old yet,_ he thought to himself. _There’s no reason to feel quite this bone-weary. All will be well._

“I’m sure he’ll be fine to return to your quarters tonight,” the head healer, Master Che, told him comfortingly. “Alderaan already checked him over and you know they’re good. And they know Feemor. This is just a precaution, and to make sure…he may need to see a Mind Healer if he was exposed to enough Darkness.”

Qui-Gon rubbed his temples. “I…I can’t believe he walked into a festival and faced down a Sith, alone. He did so well, despite what he thinks. From the reports, his opponent--they were one of the true, insane Sith children. I…I know he’s strong. I’m so proud of him. And yet.”

“It doesn’t,” Che said bluntly.

“What?”

“It doesn’t get easier,” the female Twi’lek clarified. “Sending your Padawans off? It doesn’t get easier, not even for a Healer. You have to accept that, and do it anyway. Feemor has to be brave enough to walk away, you see, and if you’re afraid, so will he be.”

Qui-Gon nodded slowly. The tall Jedi straightened himself forcibly, but he couldn’t seem to get his head not to hang.

“Headache,” Che diagnosed. “Let me get you something.”

Jinn mumbled something but accepted the pill meekly, knowing the wrath of Vokara Che was nothing to laugh at.

They waited in silence while the Padawan assessed Feemor in the next room, both Che and Jinn lost deep in their own thoughts. Time seemed to move so slowly.

It felt as if the Galaxy had entered a new era, but it also felt as if nothing had changed. It was disorienting.

“So,” Healer Che said after a long, long while. “Have you told him the news?”

“That he passed three of his five Trials in one night? Not yet,” Qui-Gon admitted. “I promised to fill him in tomorrow. He’s not going to be happy at first. He was looking forward to taking the standard Trials, to facing what almost everyone else has faced for time out of mind.”

“This isn’t unprecedented,” Che pointed out.

“No,” said Qui-Gon. “No. But it’s still different.”

When the door finally opened and his weary, soon-to-be-Knighted Padawan exited, looking wan again, all golden hair and pale face and rigid spine, he considered to himself that a great many things would be different from here on out. Still. Feemor fell into step beside him instead of behind; the Jedi Temple buzzed with news but no one was allowing fear to conquer them, and down below them in the creche the younglings still played and the Initiates still trained and dreamed just as they always had.

Feemor was the one to throw an arm around his Master this time, and they walked to their quarters in companionable silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that was fun.
> 
> Rapid-fire updates have been today's theme. Love to all my readers!


	8. Knighthood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been one year since Alderaan.   
> Things begin to change very quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I am the slowest updater ever. I am so, so sorry.   
> I promise I haven't been ignoring this, not even through Whumptober.   
> I have been having a HELL of a time trying to sort out this *enormous* alternate timeline I'm running here. It's a bit of a massive undertaking, but I did it to myself! Anyways. For those of you interested, I'm still having issues with the dating system for this timeline, but otherwise everything is now in order. I may have to go back later and retcon the *numbers,* but I don't think so.   
> Read on, darlings!

“Please input today’s date and time according to your locality, using the Republican Galactic Standard Dating System.”

Mace Windu scowled down at the holo-table before him, glowing blue and innocent, as if it weren’t being the most infuriating piece of tech he had encountered in years. “I already did,” he muttered. _“Twice.”_

'Apologies,' the computerized voice said in a monotone. 'Your input is not compatible with the required date notation.'

“I know that,” the Jedi Master growled.

'Apologies, your input—'

_“Seriously?”_

'Apologies, your input—'

“Centaxday, Fourth Month, RGSD 3596,” Windu ground out.

The holotable beeped pleasantly. 'Thank you, Council Master,' it said in that same monotone. 'Begin recording.'

Mace straightened his spine and folded his arms into his sleeves. “Jedi Knight Mace Windu, reporting from the Coruscant Temple on behalf of Master Yoda. The Temple thrives; the Force provides, Ashla guides. Our council with the other Temples tells us that our trade continues to thrive, all the Corps are flourishing, although the records indicate that the number of incoming Initiates continues to decline, and this is beginning to affect the stability of all the Corps. Our representative in the Senate, Zang Arraira, remains a popular liaison with the members of our alliance with the esteemed Galactic Republic. The Corellian Temple is currently undergoing repairs after an incident regarding accidental Emerald Lightning, the details of which can be found in attached files. Meanwhile, our hunt for the Sith has escalated, but produced little to no results, and the population at large is beginning to forget the tragedy of over a year ago.”

Windu paused. “…All relevant documents are attached to this file. May the Force be with you.”

He shut down the holotable and exited the room in a swirl of brown robes. 

Outside the room, he walked smack-dab into Qui-Gon Jinn, an almost-collision that was only avoided with Jedi reflexes.

“Mace,” the Knight said cordially, deftly rearranging his cloak as it tried to slip off his shoulder. “How are you?”

“Oh, exceedingly wonderful,” Windu said, straight-faced.

Qui-Gon’s lips quirked in a smile.

Mace eyed him. “It’s unusual to have you at the Temple on Coruscant for more than a day or so, these days,” he observed. “It’s like you’ve been avoiding us. Just as predicted.”

He turned deliberately and began to walk down the hallway, gesturing for Feemor to follow him—if he wished. The Knight obliged, striding easily at the only slightly taller man’s side.

“I hear they had bets running on how quickly I would become a wayfarer, vanish into the Outer Rim, or get myself put on the MIA list somehow,” Qui-Gon said, only half amused.

“They did,” Windu confirmed. “Literal betting pools. Dooku found it hilarious. Tahl Uvain is still in the running, she’ll have an excellent payday if she wins.”

Jinn laughed genuinely, throwing his head backwards and rubbing his forehead in exaggerated exasperation. “Of course he was, and of course she is,” he said. “How very _them_.”

“So?” the younger Knight asked. “Why not stick around for once? Why leave constantly? The Order doesn’t want to run you into the ground, you know, despite the Council’s appreciation for your skills.”

“Yes, I do know.” Qui-Gon said slowly, brushing a stray lock of long brown hair over his shoulder. “I just…I want to re-orient myself to working…independently. It’s been awhile. I had barely established myself as a solo Knight before I apprenticed Feemor, and now…” He paused, shook himself, then began again. “Besides, outside of the Temple I’m away from Yoda and his stick.”

Windu chuckled. “Reasonable.” But he side-eyed his friend knowingly.

“What were you up to when I nearly crashed into you, Mace?” Qui-Gon asked curiously. “Not that I don’t trust you, but I thought that was a Council-use room.”

Mace hesitated. He was young, yet—just about six years younger than Qui-Gon, he was by age a peer of Feemor’s, but he ran with a slightly older crowd.

 _Everyone_ knew Mace Windu had been Knighted at sixteen, for his exceptional maturity, skill with a blade, and his unusual power of insight that was referred to as ‘Shatterpoints.’

“Ahhh…well, not that I don’t trust you,” Windu said, echoing Jinn’s phrasing, “But I am going to ask you not to spread this around. I…I was inputting a Council report on Master Yoda’s behalf. Nothing secret, just a general overview after the Joint Council Gathering last week, but…”

Qui-Gon’s eyebrows rose. “…They’re grooming you for a Council seat.”

“They are,” Mace said, wearily. “They just need me to train a Padawan so I can be named a Master, and then I imagine they’ll promote me right away.” He shrugged. “…My…unique insight…is valued.”

Qui-Gon looked galled. “…That…that’s an incredible amount of pressure. Mace, I’m sorry.”

Windu shook his head. “We all have our own burdens to bear, Jinn, I just happen to have a very obvious one.”

They walked in silence for a bit, their dark brown and medium brown cloaks brushing against one another as they did. A flock of younglings darted past, giggling, and Qui-Gon winked at the teenage Padawan escorting them, and the poor Twi’lek blushed bright purple. Mace snorted.

“I’m not derailing you, am I?” he asked suddenly. “I asked you to walk with me, but I have no idea where you’re going.”

“The Force will guide,” Qui-Gon said, in typical Jinn fashion that made Mace almost roll his eyes.

“In all seriousness,” Qui-Gon continued, “I assume you’re heading to the main hangar, because Master Nu mentioned that you have a flight to Jedha within the hour, and we’re going in that general direction. And it just so happens that I’m going there, too, so I’m content to follow you,” he teased.

“You’re leaving too? And here I was talking about you maybe sticking around for a few days,” Mace exclaimed.

“No, no, I am staying,” Jinn assured him. “I’m meeting Feemor. He commed me yesterday…he’s on his way, with a child he found on Search.”

Mace looked at Qui-Gon out of the corner of his eye, and saw that he was already grinning. Like a fool. 

Very much like a bored older brother, excited to irritate a younger brother after months of separation.

“A new initiate?” Mace said idly. “That’s wonderful news.”

“Yes, yes,” Qui-Gon said, but he clearly wasn’t focused on the growth of the Jedi Order. He was still smiling a little, looking more like an excited youngling than he would like to know. Mace smothered a smirk of his own.

They reached the hangar in the next few minutes, still talking amicably about current affairs in the Temple and Jedi concerns. There was a shining blue-silver cruiser waiting for Windu, but he waved down the pilot and remained with Jinn, waiting.

They didn’t have to wait long.

A much less shiny passenger shuttle glided in after only five minutes, and Qui-Gon straightened up, his expression serene but his eyes smiling all on their own.

The ramp lowered, and Feemor emerged.

He was utterly absorbed in the small bundle of black fabric in his arms, and he didn’t see the two Jedi watching him.

Over a year into his Knighthood, Feemor Ar’Gall had followed in the footsteps of every other Knight in history and had grown out his awkward Padawan cut; in Feemor’s case, he had cut his straw-blonde hair close against the sides and let the rest grow longer into low, a ruggedly combed quiff. He had swapped out the robes that had matched Qui-Gon’s for a warmer brown, and had chosen a green over-tunic to layer with the beige.

He looked all that a Knight just entering his second year ought to—comfortable, confident, humble.

Then he looked up from the child and saw Windu and Qui-Gon.

Feemor beamed, and Qui-Gon beamed back, and they both started striding towards one another, entirely forgetting about poor Knight Windu, who shook his head and mumbled to himself as he set off towards his own ship.

Qui-Gon and Feemor clasped hands, and then the older man threw his arm around the younger Knight’s shoulder.

“Qui-Gon,” Feemor said warmly. “It’s been awhile. You’ve been off-planet every time I’ve been at the Temple since I was Knighted!”

“Well, I’ve been rebuilding my reputation,” Qui-Gon said seriously. “You tarnished it.”

 _“I_ tarnished _your_ reputation?” Feemor said archly. “Your _spotless_ reputation as a rogue, maverick, rebel, rascal, thorn-in-the-side-of-the-Council? Why, Master, I’m so sorry.”

“Brat,” Qui-Gon complained.

He reached up to pull Feemor’s Padawan braid, only to groan when he realized that that little advantage was gone. His former apprentice radiated smug satisfaction, but was quickly distracted when the bundle of dark fabric in his arms wiggled and a tiny cry came forth. Both men looked down at once.

“Oh, my,” Qui-Gon said, almost crooning. “And who is this?”

Feemor smiled. “This is our newest addition, all of three months old. Qui-Gon, meet Initiate Luminara Unduli.”

“Greetings, Luminara Unduli,” Jinn said gravely. “May the Force be with you, small one.”

Luminara Unduli wrinkled up her tiny green nose and cried.

Qui-Gon looked flabbergasted. Feemor laughed.

“Walk with me to the Halls?” he asked. “I have to get Unduli checked over and then taken to her new home, and I need a checkup myself. I leave again tomorrow morning.”

Something in Qui-Gon’s smile faded, just a little. “So soon? I’m the one who’s supposed to constantly be on the loose.”

“’On the loose’ is the best descriptor for _your_ version of Jedi duties that I’ve ever heard,” laughed the blonde. “And yes, normally, I’d enjoy a Temple stay, but I’m returning to Alderaan. Antilles thinks he has another lead on the Sith, and I’m not inclined to ignore him.”

Something curdled inside Qui-Gon’s gut. He didn’t like the thought of Feemor returning to the site that had nearly killed him, in search of the people responsible for the attack. He also knew that he had no say in the matter, and that his former apprentice wouldn’t appreciate a verbal protest. Feemor Ar’Gall was an adult, not much younger than Qui-Gon himself, and an excellent Knight.

“Safe travels, then,” Qui-Gon said with forced cheer.

Feemor didn’t seem to notice the effort it took. “But not until you walk with me to the Halls. I need you in case the Healers decide to kidnap me.”

“Ah, yes,” Qui-Gon said wryly, falling into step beside him. “Well, I’ll be sure to jailbreak you at the first sign of trouble.”

Feemor laughed, and the two friends – former partners – walked off together.

* * *

“I’m sorry to have been a disappointment, my friend,” Vill Antilles sighed. “I’m afraid this enemy is… more slippery than we believed.”

Feemor waved a hand forgivingly. “I understand. You think the Jedi have achieved much more? The Sith and their contacts slip through our fingers every day, and we still can’t determine why they put so much effort into murdering the former Senator of Naboo.”

Vill nodded. He eyed his empty glass, and Feemor’s near-empty glass, and then raised an eyebrow at the Jedi.

Feemor raised an eyebrow back.

Vill refilled their glasses, three fingers of Bothan-brewed whiskey. One of their smallest, and finest, exports. And quite strong.

“I’m only sorry that your attempt to follow a lead resulted in the deaths of some of your bravest,” Feemor said, his fingers gliding over the rim of his glass. “The men and women of Alderaan are unfailingly noble and forthright, and I am sorry to have been the cause of the loss of any of them.”

Antilles shook his head, putting his glass down just as he had raised it to his lips. “No. No, Feemor Ar’Gall, this is _not_ your fault. We _chose_ to pursue this investigation. Our home was attacked, a friend and ally was murdered, and you were deliberately targeted. The Sith are a danger to the galaxy at large, and they made Alderaan their explicit enemy last year.” He rubbed his forehead tiredly, and then took a large sip of his whiskey. “…I am sorry for our losses, too. But the military of Alderaan is unafraid.”

Feemor raised his glass. “To Alderaan.”

“To Alderaan,” replied Vill. “And the end of the Sith.”

A vindicative and uncompromising toast, not the words of a Jedi – but still, Feemor raised his glass to ring against Vill Antilles’ and downed the glass in one.

Then he sputtered, and Vill chuckled, shattering the somber mood.

“Come on then,” the Alderaanian noble said after a moment. “Stay the night, and Alaea and I will see you off in the morning.”

Although the two companions did not know it – had no way of knowing it – there was a cloaked ship flying far, far over their heads as they spoke, making a pause to sublight after hours of hyperspeed travel.

Just one ship, an ordinary ship, shielded.

One among millions in that sector at that same moment.

But this particular ship, on this particular journey, would change everything.

* * *

Feemor shed his cloak as he descended the ramp of his ship, returning once more to the Temple – but this time alone, and with a heavier step.

And no one to greet him.

Tired, and wishing he had accepted the bottle of whiskey Alaea had tried to send with him, the young Knight tossed his cloak over his shoulder and strode inside, thinking about a warm shower and a long sleep. And, hopefully, the two-week absence from active missions he had requested.

“Feemor!”

But there was someone to greet him, after all.

Ar’Gall turned towards the nearest doorway and saw three people heading in his direction.

Qui-Gon led the way, striding towards him with his usual poorly-fitting robes and his cloak billowing dramatically, smiling warmly at the sight of him. Half a step behind him was Tahl, striking as ever and also smiling, but her forehead pinched as if she were frustrated, too – not surprising, if she was with Qui-Gon.

But the third gave him pause.

“Feemor,” said Qui-Gon again. “Back to stay this time?”

“Hopefully,” answered the younger man, running a hand through his hair. “Two weeks at least, I hope. Tahl, it’s good to see you.”

She smiled at him. And still, she looked – just a little unhappy.

Before he could ask, Qui-Gon pushed the third person forwards – a boy of about twelve, with striking deep blue, upturned eyes set in alabaster skin, and hair so dark it was hard to tell whether it was brown or black. It was shaved close to his head, and behind his left ear hung a short braid with a single bead.

The boy smiled easily up at Feemor. “Hello, Knight Ar’Gall,” he said, not waiting on Qui-Gon to introduce him. “I’m Padawan Xanatos DuCrion. Qui-Gon just took me as his apprentice yesterday.”

Both Qui-Gon and Xanatos beamed at Feemor.

Feemor grinned back. “My goodness! _Hels_ , Qui-Gon, that was _fast_. So eager to put me behind you?” They laughed together.

“No, no,” said Jinn. “But Xanatos… it was just meant to be.”

“It was!” agreed DuCrion, smirking with pleasure. “And it’s nice to know I have a friendly ally somewhere when I need one. For starters, is there a way to make our Master put his shoes somewhere besides _right_ in the places where _people walk?”_

Feemor laughed loudly. Something tight in his chest that had been there since Alderaan – this week, or last year, it was hard to say – began to ease. He liked this kid. “If there is, I never found it. Your Master is an unrepentant _slob_.”

“Hey!” cried Qui-Gon.

And none of them paid the slightest attention to Tahl, who watched them interact with a small smile but with doubt swirling in her eyes.

Nor could any of them have seen or known as Mace Windu, a dozen levels above their heads, stumbled against a wall, cradling his head in one hand, watching a hundred futures flash by, glimpses see through shattered glass, overlapping and tangling and tainted with shadows.

* * *

A man and a boy walked quickly towards a waiting ship.

The man was striding, confident, borderline frantic.

The child was stumbling along at his feet, one of his small wrists caught in a vicelike grip, practically being dragged through the dust. The child sniffled and began to make whimpers of protest.

“ _Quiet_ ,” hissed the man. “Or it will be worse for you.”

 _Fear-pain-shock-please-don’t-hurt-me-fear_ —the boy was radiating emotions, broadcasting them into the Force. Somewhere behind them, something in the mists began to stir. The man made a noise of disgust and picked the child up, increasing his pace and ignoring the child’s struggles.

“I won’t hurt you unless you _make_ me,” the man said, his voice taut as wire. “But there are others who will hurt you just for the pleasure of watching you scream. So I suggest you listen to me while you’re under my protection.”

The child was too young to fully understand him, but he began to sob in earnest, opening his mouth in a hacking cry that rose up into a terrified scream.

Behind them, many things began to move – something had been awoken.

The man strode up the ramp into his ship, the squirming, shrieking youngling pinned to his side, just as a terrible scream of dismay rose from the caves they had left behind. The two unhappy companions were already rising through the atmosphere when a cloud of green smoke poured forth from the caves, spilling across the ground in a great tide, bearing with it a single figure wrapped in red robes and a woman’s voice wailing – _“My son!”_

The ship vanished as it leapt into hyperspeed, to return along the path it had just come from.

The bereft mother screamed and screamed and screamed—

* * *

A mother screamed as her labor took its toll, the sensation seeming to tear up her entire body. Her face was ashen from hours upon hours of exertion; a pair of bright green eyes blazed with anguish and a fierce, pain-hazy determination.

Sweat trickled from under her hair. One hand was gripping the bedside, the other was holding her husband’s hand so tightly that his fingertips had long since turned purple. He looked pained but he said nothing, watching her face with desperate attention, praying inside his head.

“Almost there,” the midwife said calmly. “Ready?”

The mother answered with another scream.

And then another, and another, and one final scream that faded into a gasp.

“Well done,” the midwife praised, her efficient hands already cutting the cord, deftly cleaning the newborn off.

“Stars in the heavens,” the father murmured. “I’m proud of you, my love, you did so well.”

His wife gasped raggedly, her chest heaving, and rustled up a faint smile for him. The smile blossomed into a beam when the midwife handed her the child, settling the squirming, wailing child into her welcoming arms. The father leaned closer to stare down at the small red face, and even as the infant wailed both parents began to chuckle, marveling.

“Did you decide on a name?” the midwife prompted, watching with gentle appreciation born from years of experience with this same trial, with watching it end in joy, or in heartbreak.

“We did,” the father said.

The mother smiled down at her son, her long ginger-blonde hair falling from her shoulder to brush against his small head, feathered with wispy curls of the exact same shade. “Welcome to the galaxy and all its wonders, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! In terms of the BBY dating system we all know and love, we have just landed in 57 BBY (fifty-seven years before the destruction of the first Death Star.)


End file.
